


Phoenix

by violetnyte



Series: Replacement [2]
Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Cain is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Rape/Non-con References, Sexual Content, Uncontrollable Feels, Unrequited Love, feelsplosion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:07:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 58,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetnyte/pseuds/violetnyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow-up to Replacement, with Praxis POV as well as Deimos. I suck at writing summaries, but the Reliant crashes and causes a feels-explosion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One, Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to 'Replacement' which is the story of how Praxis and Deimos got together. I'd recommend you read that one first since I'll be referencing events that happened, although it isn't strictly necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Praxis POV)

The roil and bellow of smoke is nauseating, the oil-slick aroma permeating everything, masking over the stench of the engines and blood, the sweat of men, acrid exertion and fear. There’s blood down one side of his face, nothing serious, just a small cut at his brow, so fresh that I can imagine the reckless haste with which he tumbled from his ship and earned such a wound.

I almost have to run to catch him, because he’s gotten his balance, figured out which direction to go, and all I want to do is hug him because he’s alive, I’m alive, but I don’t, I catch him, throw my arms over him, haul him to me. I get the fight I expect, but it’s startling all the same.

He’s in my arms like a tantrum-throwing toddler, wild, heartbreaking sounds of panic and pain pouring out of him in the same whisper-soft way as always. I try to pull him together, clasp him to my chest, but he’s so fraught, fighting me so hard, I’m scared that I’ll hurt him. I can’t let him go, I can’t do anything but grab for him, hold him to me, ignore the ineffective kicks and jutting elbows. He’s all limb sometimes, scrawny and furious, it’s lucky he’s so little or this would never work.

“Deimos, stop. You can’t! Deimos!” I can shout because everyone’s shouting, there’s noise all around us. The roar of the ships, the blare of the alarms and sirens, men yelling both chaos and order alike, it’s just a deafening cacophony.

“Deimos, there’s nothing you can do!” One final plea for reason, trying to break through his madness, because otherwise I am going to hurt him just trying to keep him safe, so he can’t go get himself hurt, because I’m constantly struggling to do just that. He gets hurt so easily and never thinks about it, never thinks anyone would care.

It makes him sag again me with a sob, the fight draining out of him with one broken admission of defeat. I catch for him, pull him into my arms without thinking, let him fall against my chest and cry. There’s enough chaos around us that it might go unnoticed, might not get thought of as anything more than what everyone else is doing, so long as I resist the urge to kiss away his flurry of tears.

He’s sobbing so hard, unbearably loud for him, something still so quiet because he’s always quiet.  My words have sunk in, making him angry, desolate, I can tell he’s frustrated and scared, he knows there isn’t anything he can do and that’s the worst. I run my hand over the dark shine of his hair, smoothing down the snarl from his helmet, from the battle, like if everything were as easy to fix as these stray locks. We’re both helpless, clung to each other, alive and whole, but it’s a hollow victory.

Across the hanger bay, the Reliant continues to burn.


	2. Part One, Chapter Two

Medical won’t let him in, won’t let anyone in except casualties, and the little cut on his brow is nothing, it’s something I can blot clean myself, so I don’t even bother taking him down there. He’s gone to numb, soft grey eyes glazed over, letting me guide him through the ship without so much as a blink. There’s people everywhere, scurry around, so much chaos that I keep a tight hold of his hand so we’re not separated.

Ethos is inside the room, already scrubbed clean, seated up on his bunk with a pillow clutched under his chin, big-eyed and shaken, but alive, whole, it isn’t like with my other navigator this time. He straightens at the sight of us, pulls himself together into a thin smile. He’s only able to hold it for a trembling moment before it collapses in at the sight of Deimos.

I catch his eye and just shake my head slightly, warning at him. I bring Deimos over to my bunk and set him there, not caring that he’s still in his flight suit, smelling heavily like oil and smoke, the thick, terrible scent of the hanger thanks to the Reliant. He looks so small, seated with his shoulders slumped, head down, staring at his feet. Probably thinking about that last transmission from Abel, desperate, starting to panic. It’s a miracle he got the Reliant back at all, but I don’t want to use up our miracles thinking like that. I have to stay hopeful for Deimos’ sake.

The bunk shakes slightly as Ethos crawls down to investigate. I leave Deimos there momentarily, just long enough to get a warm, wet washcloth. I take a bit of extra time to wash my face as well, set the eye patch aside to splash the ash and oil from my skin. I fix the black patch back into place before taking the cloth out to Deimos, wanting to blot the blood from his forehead.

Ethos is seated right up next to him, whispering at him, but he falls silent at the sight of me. Big round-eyes, so he reminds me of a cat my sister found under the car and spent all day trying to coax out with bread and milk. He always looks half-scared of me, half-hopeful, so I don’t understand if he likes me as a person or just as his fighter, just as someone to share the room with him and not complain about noises in the night.

My navigator scoots away from Deimos, or maybe from me, as I cross the small room and begin to blot at the little wound. It’s already stopped bleeding, didn’t bleed all that much to begin with, but I don’t know what else to do except fuss at the hurt I can see, rather than the hurt I can’t reach. I’m not stupid, I know why he’s broken down because the Reliant’s crashed, and I force myself to stay gentle as I press the wet cloth at his face.

The cloth pinks and then spots with red, collects streaks of grey soot. Abruptly he lifts his eyes up from the floor, up to my face, just staring at me with an unnerving sort of blankness before he blinks, stands, looks more like himself. Coming back from wherever he went after breaking down in the hanger. It’s almost visible, the way he pulls himself together, trying to look tough and callous, shrugging off my concern.

He starts for the door, so I go after him, block his path in a way that’s slow, not wanting to make him feel trapped. “Deimos, where—?”

“Get changed,” he whispers. He’s always whispering, rough along the edges and raw, ragged, but so small and hushed, soft and rare, that his voice is just like him, so perfectly suited to him. He doesn’t look at me, hiding behind the downward curve of his face and the fall of his bangs. He shrugs instead, indicating his flight suit, maybe pointing out the filth of him, like any of that matters to me when I’m just the same.

“Find Phobos.” He offers more explanation, desperate for me to let him leave, and I don’t want to think about why, don’t want to think he’s angry with me for keeping him from the Reliant. He would have thrown himself straight into the flames to save Cain, would have burned his hands ripping at the heated metal, would have ignored the fire crews, the first aid workers, everyone more qualified than him already on the scene, and I both do and don’t understand why.  

I glance at Ethos, who is politely pretending to fuss at a loose thread on his sleeve, and then lean close, daring to run my fingers through Deimos’ bangs, push them aside so I can get a better look at him. He doesn’t look at me, keeps looking down, but his shoulders hunch, quick and defensive, telling me to leave him alone, to go away, because he’s angry and frustrated again, trying to reject me because it’s the only thing he has control over.

I want to hug him, kiss him, make him blush and smile like I sometimes can when we’re together, but I know better than that. He doesn’t want me right now, and I have to let him go, consoling myself with just a quick brush of my lips against his hair, my arm tight over his shoulders. He’s so tense, not even breathing, same as always when I surprise him like this, like he can’t believe someone would ever be nice to him, ever just hug him because he needs a hug.

I let him go, but now he’s gotten confused, moving toward door like he doesn’t want to leave. He looks at me, just briefly, eyes clouded with doubt and hurt; he has no idea how much shows in his expressions sometimes, or maybe he does, maybe he’s trying to tell me something without using the rasping voice that he hates.

“I’ll see you later,” I say. I force it to sound casual, both a promise and a question, letting him know that he’s welcomed back anytime even though we’ll likely all be called together for a briefing once things settle, once they figure out which teams are still active, still able to fight.

He nods, short, quick, so I know it was the right thing to say by the flashing relief that crosses his face. And then he’s gone, slipping through the door, hurrying out into the crowded corridor. 


	3. Part One, Chapter Three

It’s the first batch of statistics, cold little numbers, the first word out from medical about the Reliant and the others brought back in pieces, or those not brought back at all. We’re standing as close together as we dare at the briefing, so close that I can brush the back of my hand against his and make it look like an accident. He’s so tense, so scared, trying so desperately not to look it. I’ve got him on my good side, in sight of my one eye, so I can pretend to pay attention to the Lead Fighter when I’m really just watching the slight crumple of Deimos’ brow, the slope of his mouth.

Alive, both of them, navigator and fighter, not the worst news even if not the best either, since the fighter’s listed as critical and the navigator incapacitated for duty. One more miracle used up, besides the one Abel took getting the Reliant back at all, and the one I begged for when Phobos cut too close to the enemy line.

Afterward we meet in the storage room, our designated place for times when neither of our dorms will work or are simply too far across the ship for the moment. Hardly anyone ever comes here, the crates gathering dust, and I find him sitting on the floor wrapped in the blanket we’ve smuggled in and left.

He looks up when the door opens, half-hopeful, almost like the look Ethos gives me, except the other half of him is pure hurt, an open wound, so that it draws me across the room like a beacon. I kneel in front of him, being slow about it, but he just throws himself over me, face buried in my shoulder, arms looped around my neck. He’s so tense, shaking with all the things he keeps inside himself, not making a sound but it’s like the breakdown in the hanger all over again.

I get to where it’s more comfortable, where I can sit with him in my lap, rubbing my hands over his back and shoulders. I’m not sure what to say. It’s a minefield, trying to talk to him about Cain, _Sacha_ , the Reliant’s fighter who the guiltiest, most shameful parts of me considered hoping for the worst. It’s unpardonably cruel of me, but the absolute wickedness is that I’m relieved because I didn’t want Cain to die a hero, to become some ghost to get between us more than he already does.

Eventually Deimos stops trembling, manages to get himself under control, so he’s just quiet against me, arms lax over my shoulders, head nudged against my neck. The soft brush of his lips is almost ticklish with the sweet way he kisses the bead of my pulse, the crook of my shoulder. He’s unexpectedly tender at times, deeply needful of affection in a way I don’t think he likes, that he doesn’t trust. He always seems braced afterward, like I’ll get mad him for it, like I don’t love when he’s sweet to me. 

“Worried,” he says. So soft, his little whisper even quieter than usual.

“I know,” I say. I swallow, force myself to soothe, “But Cain will be—“

He pulls away with a shake of his head, pushing at my shoulders to interrupt me. “No,” he says. His eyes are intense, bright, soft grey and pale, searching over my face in that way he does often, trying to read a novel of wealth from my every expression. It’s almost frightening sometimes, how intense he can get, because he’s so sleek and dangerous, unassuming because of his size. I see the words form, struggle, he has to poke his nose and lips against my ear to say them, hiding his face with the gesture. Hardly more than air the way he says, “About you.”

“Me? Why?”

He sits back, looks sideways, shrugs. Doesn’t say anything right away, just brings his eyes back to me, soft, intense, so focused like there’s nothing else except the tender touch of his fingers against my face, stroking where the string cuts into my brow, brushing against the black fabric where I can’t see. “Love you more,” he says, fierce, insistent, almost not a whisper. Reaffirming it, like he needs to say it aloud, the way he always says it, so my heart stutters and thrashes.

He’s the one who leans forward, brings our lips together. There’s something about kissing that I’ve never asked him about, but it makes him seem shy, unsure, so each one is clumsy and new like a first kiss all over again. Sometimes he’ll flinch from me, if I catch him off guard with it, fearful in a way that never happens otherwise, never like when Ethos forgets I’m in the room and leaves the shower in only a towel, or nights when he’s too loud so I try to wake him.

I want to be tender with Deimos, sweet like earlier, but he’s rough about it, insistent, digging his hands into my jacket and arching to me, pleading without words. He’s scared down deep inside somewhere, the hidden place he keeps all his hurt, all the things that he doesn’t understand because he’s so lost sometimes, so distant to me. All I can do is try to find him, pull him back, run my hands over his body and give him what he wants, what he needs.

I keep it slow all the same, refusing to let him rush, refusing to let him get hurt. I take my time stripping back his jacket, unclasping his belt, smooth and controlled unlike the jerking way he attacks my clothes, treats them like some enemy to rip through, trying to get at me in a way he understands, in a way that I don’t like because of all the bruises I’ve seen on him, because of the way he gets confused when I’m nice to him.

I set him into the blanket, which isn’t much padding against the cold floor, but it’s all we have. I bring him against my chest, just wanting to hold him for a moment, relish the feel of his dusky skin up against mine, the lean muscles, the small, perfect shape of his hands, his wrists, his neck. He twists out from my arms, sets me into the blanket instead, sits across my hips with his thighs pressed close. He strokes his fingers over my belly, almost ticklish with it, staring down at me like he’s never seen me before, or maybe afraid he’ll never seen me again.

I try to sit up, but he pushes me back, keeps a hand on my chest. Only when he’s sure I’ll stay down does he move, slide against me, folding himself down between my legs with his mouth. He strokes with his hands first, just kissing lightly, so that my balls tighten and my cock jumps, swells, hardens with the playful tease of him that’s both insistent and slow. His tongue slides over the slit, tasting the salted trickle, and then he encloses wet heat over me, arching his back with it, so good at this that it’s sinful.

He brings his hands up, along my sides, reaching for me so that I take them, hold them, rub his knuckles and flex against him. He pulls his mouth to the tip, still teasing, before lowering his whole body over me, swallowing, so good at this that I groan. It makes him hum slightly, almost like laughing at me except it isn’t one of those times he’s being playful, despite all the teasing ways he’s getting me aroused. There’s something more here, something desperate, but he’s so good, it’s been so long, I just want to forget and enjoy it.

He rises up over me again, pulling his hands free, straddling me carefully. I reach for him, try to sit up, wanting to kiss him, roll him into the blanket, smother him with my body and pull little cries from him when I make him feel good. He pushes me away, back down again, insistent, slicking his saliva over my cock with his hand.

There’s the intensity of his eyes, the way he searches my face, and then his eyes are closed, he’s leaned back, lowering himself, so it’s pressure and pushing. He’s tense, insistent, nowhere near ready, forcing this because of all that desperation I was too stupid to understand, because there’s something hurting in him and he doesn’t know what to do otherwise. Something gives way with difficulty and then he’s sliding down, sheathing himself fully, making some fluttering noise that scares me.

I’m panicking because of that small sound, the whine of pain to it, the way he’s dry and tight, eyes scrunched together. I’ve got to stop this, because I don’t want to hurt him, but he’s insistent and it gets ugly for a moment. I have to push him harder than I mean to, harder than I ever wanted to, knocking him into a sprawl so we’re both breathless, my chest tight with fear, his hitching around what’s starting to sound like tears again.

“Deimos—“ I’m not sure what I’m going to say, what I can say, but it doesn’t matter because he’s on me again, flinging himself at me, bawling into my shoulder so it’s just like the hanger all over again, just like I can smell the Reliant burning.

I realize there’s words tangled into the cries, the hushed, muted sound of him breaking. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—“ His arms tighten, almost strangling me, like he’s so scared I’ll push him away again.

My heart’s still racing, wild and unsure, because I’ve never seen him like this, so raw and open. Part of me is jealous just for a moment, painful like a sudden flare and flash of a blaster, because I don’t like the way he tried to use me, don’t like that it’s Cain – _Sacha_ – who’s done this to him. But he’s so wretched about it, so scared because he knows he’s upset me, that all I can do is hold him close, stroke his hair, hush at him until he stops apologizing and just cries instead, angry and desolate.

“Deimos…” I sigh, pull him to me tighter, feeling the press of his cheek and the flutter of his lashes, both sensations so wet and fragile, so I’m impossibly tangled into knots. He hands curl into me, his whole body tensing, so that I know what he needs to hear me say. “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

He nods, grateful, apologetic again even though he doesn’t say it. It isn’t like we’ve talked about this, because I have to save up all my conversations and use them carefully, force him to tell me things only when I can’t understand otherwise. He knows I always want things to go slow, to be careful, that I want to make love to him, not just fuck him, that what we have is more than that to me, because he is so precious to me, because I love him. He knows all that, he has to, but this is something desperate in him, something that’s hurting him so deeply, so I have to make sure he doesn’t know it but understands it.

I tip his face where I can see. His cheeks are wet, gritty with tears, sweet like salted caramel when I kiss them. I brush aside his bangs, kiss him on the lips this time, treat him so gently that he gradually quiets, stops crying, stares at me with deep, wounded distress.

“Deimos,” I say. Soft, satisfied, trying to let him know that it really is okay. I stroke his hair, rub at the back of his neck, make him relax with it. Wait until he’s calmed down before asking, “Are you hurt?”

He shakes his head, like I expect him to, because it’s not something he’d admit even if it were true. I can only trust the quickness of the gesture, he doesn’t hesitate about it, the fearful way he looks at me afterward that tells me he’s being truthful but doesn’t think I’ll believe him. I sigh, so relieved it hurts, because I never thought it was possible to care so much for one person.

He bites his lip, so I know he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, he hates the way he sounds too much no matter how many times I try to tell him his voice is just as beautiful as the rest of him, so tough, rough edged, secretly soft and sweet.

I nudge at him with my forehead, kiss his lips so that it’s almost chaste, wait to see how he reacts. He tips into me, still being needy without trying to act like it, torn up inside and so fragile that I have to be careful. This time when I’m slow he lets me, heartbreakingly passive, nothing but soft, worried eyes and little noises that aren’t more than air, like he’s going to cry again, breath short and sweet. I take my time, run my hands over his body, kissing at his neck and shoulders, waiting until he’s relaxed and less scared, not just aroused but enjoying it, wanting it.

It’s been so long, since before the endless ring of alarms and sirens in the night, the fraught tensions of dogfights and skirmishes, only getting to see each other at briefings, in the halls, racing to and from our ships, no time to stop and just be together. I just want to hold him, feel him safe and whole against me, heart beating, lungs working, eyes soft and serious, getting softer, hazing over with desire the more I stretch him, kiss him, stroke him slow and steady.

I fold his back against my chest so we’re side by side, spooned together, my head bent over his shoulder so we can still kiss. I keep waiting, wanting him sweet again. He’s so willing, so passive, like I’ve scared him somehow, made him so timid that he won’t push back, won’t reach for me. It isn’t how I want it, but if I stop now it’ll break him, I know it’ll break him.

I bring our hips together, push into him, and he doesn’t make a sound, just breathes a bit faster, nudges his nose into my neck. I rock into him, making him shiver, setting a rhythm that’s so slow it’s barely anything because I just want to hold him, feel him, lie here forever. But I can’t, I know that, so I move a little quicker, make him gasp. I slide all the way out, roll him onto his back and kneel between his legs so the angle’s better, less like cuddling, more like fucking, something that he needs even though I stay gentle, go slow at first, let him get used to the pressure.

Suddenly he bites his lip, tosses his head to the side. His eyes scrunch shut, he tenses like I’ve hurt him, and I hate it, I don’t know why it's happened, so I slow even further, shift his hips like maybe it’s the angle he doesn’t like, maybe I’m too heavy and shouldn’t lean so far into him. He snatches at me instead, pulls me toward him, clings at me without saying a word, without making a sound. His hands are balled into shaking fists that he rests against my back.

I don’t know what to do, what’s gone wrong. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to do this if it’s going to hurt him. I try to pull away again, but his arms tighten over me, and noise finally falls out of him, just little rasped words, “Please. More, please.”

So I bring my hips forward, thrust into him, try to stay focused so I don’t worry myself limp and ruin things. Whatever the moment was, it passes. He calms again, stops shaking. He’s passive at first, face turned away, eyes closed, making it strange to move in and out of him, rocking his small body into the floor, confused by how good he feels because the wrongness of it all is so upsetting.

Gradually he warms, cheeks and chest flushing, eyes open to look at me now, hands finding my shoulders to hold me, knead little pleasurable encouragements into the flex of my muscles. I’ve been close for a while, holding back because I want this to be nice for him, I want to make sure he enjoys it. He arches, gasps, almost smiles, so I know it’s starting to feel good for him. I lean back, lift his legs higher, change the angle so it’s less shallow, less like cuddling.

I love when he starts making sounds, just soft little noises, not even words most of the time. He’s so quiet all the time that it seems special, so each smallness from his throat goes straight between my legs and radiates up into my chest, exciting, thrilling, making me want him all the more. I’m not going to last much longer, not now that he’s starting speaking, even though it’s hardly even words.

I press a hand against his belly, trail fingers over the hard line of his abdomen. He’s muscled, scrawny strength, deceptively small considering how strong he is, beautiful with it. I stroke his cock, slow at first, and then pumping, insistent, matching the rhythm of my hips.

His breath goes ragged, erratic, it’s almost like he’s whimpering because the noises get higher, tighter, spiraling out of control until he breaks, shudders, lashes fluttering, face flushed, so fucking beautiful I can’t stand it.

“Saah,” he cries, so soft, so quiet, but for him it’s rather loud. “Ssaah! Saash! Aahh!”

And I know he doesn’t notice, he’s too far gone to notice the way that my rhythm stutters, my hand stills, my breath catches. He’s tensing around me, still climaxing, so it’s going to happen anyway, I was at the point of no return, the orgasm hits me not even a heartbeat later. I’m helpless with it, hips shoving, burying myself in him to fill him.

We’re both breathless, but it’s because my chest is tight, lungs closed with a panicky feeling, because I have to just be imagining it, trying to form his sweet little cries into words that aren’t real. He wasn’t calling for _Sacha_ , he wouldn’t do that to me, he doesn’t say anything when he talks like that, he just makes noises because I make him feel good.

Afterward he seems sweet about it, sated, wanting to cuddle with me on the floor even though it’s hard despite the blanket, despite the way I let him drape over my chest, all hard angles and poking limbs. He’s almost humming with contentment, curled so tight up against me that it’s warm, but I’m cold inside, panicky, not wanting to let it show because I have to be wrong.

 


	4. Part One, Chapter Four

It isn’t one of those nights where he’s being loud, but I can hear him all the same. I’ve been lying in bed staring at the shadow of the bunk above for most the night, unable to sleep, worrying myself sick about what I might have heard, might not have heard. I’m being so cowardly about it, too afraid at the time to just ask Deimos about what happened and now the moment’s gone, dissolved like the alkaline tablets I drank not an hour ago, trying to calm out the knots in my stomach.

It didn’t work, just left my tongue tasting like aluminum and stale fizz, so now I’m lying in bed having to listen to the quiet sounds of distress from the top bunk. Ethos, again, just like he did when we first became partners, just like he has almost every night since I came back from the brig, even if I don’t always hear.

It’s with a soft sigh that I roll out of bed, climb halfway up the ladder to reach him, ducking my head against the ceiling. I just watch him for a moment. He’s curled into a tight ball around his pillow, wedged against the wall, same as always when he sleeps. Maybe I’ll just leave him alone. He isn’t being loud. He sounds almost like Deimos, small noises that aren’t words, except his are so fearful, so full of pain, something terrible to listen to.

“Ethos. Hey, Ethos.”

He curls tighter, whines, starting to get loud now. I bet he isn’t the only navigator or fighter having nightmares tonight after the battle, but I’m willing to equally bet that’s not the only thing he’s dreaming about.

Neither of them will tell me what happened the night that Deimos fought Logos, the night I had to take the bleeding little fighter to medical and act like I was the one who stabbed him. I just know that Deimos killed him for it, and Ethos won’t sleep unless I’m in the room. He wouldn’t tell me that at first, though, just went big-eyed and anxious if I left to meet Deimos late at night, and I would come back to find him wide awake, lying in his top bunk with all the lights on.

Before I made the connection, I stayed out so late that I just slept in Deimos’ top bunk, listening to his navigator stumble in drunk and cursing, hearing the soft hush against my neck of Deimos trying not to laugh. When I got back to my room in the morning, just to shower and change, I found Ethos in his top bunk, all the lights on, eyes bruised in a way that told me right then and there what’d happened.

Phobos is probably happier about it, even if Deimos always gives me a strange look when I insist, when we find Ethos wedged against the wall, the mattresses set on the floor like an invitation. We never talked about it, I just started telling Ethos that I’d be back, with Deimos, if that was all right, and he’d take the beds apart for us while I was gone. I’ve never been able to figure out if he’s actually asleep when we come in. We try to be quiet anyway, even if sometimes we're still kissing and cuddling each other on our side of the makeshift big bed. He never makes a sound, never stirs, just stays a pale lump against the wall, curled tight around his pillow.

“Ethos,” I call again, louder. Insistent now, because he’s starting to get loud about it, shoulders shaking, voice breaking out of whining and into cries. “Ethos!”

It jerks him awake, breath rushing, sitting upright, bewildered and scared so that he actually shrieks at the sight of me on the ladder. He recovers quickly, or tries to, breaking into nervous laughter that’s more like sobbing than anything. “Oh, ah, Praxis, you—I wasn’t—“ He’s got his pillow against his chest, clutching it, round eyes huge in the darkness just like that stupid cat under the car my sister spent all day messing with.

I don’t have bread or milk to coax him out with, so I just ask, “Bad dream?”

“Oh.” And he looks embarrassed, mortified, laughing in a way that isn’t funny at all. “Um, yeah. Sorry. Sorry if I, uh, woke you.”

Normally we’d just leave it at that, because sometimes I do wake him up, on the nights that he’s loud, and it’s always the same quick, jittering apology. It’s awkward, because I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, he so clearly does not want to talk about it, but I don’t want to go lie on my bunk and stare the shadow of his anymore. I don’t want to be alone with my worry anymore, so I might as well worry over something I might be able to fix.

“You want to talk about it?” I ask.

He shakes his head, quick, the fluff of his curls quivering with the gesture. “No, sorry to wake you.”

I frown, remember I’ve got my patch off, so the expression is probably not reassuring in the least. It’s dark enough he might not notice. I say, “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“Oh.” His arms loosen over the pillow. “Can’t sleep?”

“Something like that.”

He tips his head at me, unsure of how this conversation’s flipped around like it has. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Sure,” I say, even though I don’t. If it’ll distract him from whatever is that makes him cry out in his sleep, that’s fine.

He scoots toward the head of the bed, leaving me the rest, the pillow once again tight in his arms. He’s nervous about letting me up here, I know that, so I move slow, letting him change his mind if he wants. I sit carefully on the far end, legs over the side, shoulders and head sloped to avoid the ceiling. It’s just as well he wanted the top bunk when we moved into the Sleipnir, I barely fit.

It doesn’t seem fair to tell him exactly what’s bothering me. He knows about me and Deimos, obviously, but it isn’t my secret to share, it isn’t a secret I want shared. I don’t want to put into words the anxiousness I feel when I think about how Deimos loves Cain – _Sacha_ , how devoted he is to him, and how Cain rejects him, hurts him, doesn’t give a shit about him in a way that counts. I don’t want to even think about how secretly, shamefully happy that makes me, because if Cain wasn’t such an asshole, such a thoroughgoing bastard, I’d never stand a chance at being with Deimos.

Instead I say, “Tough day today.”

“Oh, yeah.” He pulls the pillow under his chin. “But it's over."

"Yeah." And it's a shitty way to have a conversation about nothing, but I don't know what else to say if we can't talk about what's bothering him and can't talk about what's bothering me. I resist the urge to swing my legs, because it always shakes the bunks. They're not built very sturdily.

"I guess we'll be able to head back now," he says, sounding cheerful about it. I don't think he likes the Sleipnir very much, I don't think any of us do. I forget to say anything else, even just a silly agreement, so it makes him nervous and makes him want to ramble more, say anything more to make this less awkward. "Um. I hope Abel's okay."

He would say that, he would think first about the Reliant's navigator, and I don't know if that's because he doesn't know about Cain or Deimos, or if he does know and is just being polite about it.

"He's fine," I say. I wonder if the navigators didn't get the same briefing we did, the run through of medical's cold little statistics, or if he's just making small talk, dancing around the issue.

Ethos just nods, doesn't say anything more, but there's a question wavering between us, and the awkwardness tells me that he's incredibly aware of what I'm thinking, what I have to be thinking. It wouldn’t have been hard to put the pieces together, considering Deimos is always up against Cain's side at meals, at meetings, whenever he can be. I wonder if Ethos saw us in the hanger bay. I'd only spared him enough time to make sure he was okay, that we had the Tiberius in safely, before going after Deimos. Abel's final transmission went to the entire Red Team. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together.

Ethos doesn't say it, though, he doesn't ask me about Cain, or about Deimos. He just scoots a little closer, puts his legs over the edge so that we're side by side, rather than him crammed up in the corner like facing down an attack. "Well," he says after a while, the suddenness of it startling him, like he wasn't the one just talking. "It's over now."

And I want to tell him that he's wrong, that it's only just beginning, but that would be cruel when I'm trying to be nice to him, trying to make this less awkward. We sit in the quiet dark for a bit longer, until maybe it seems like one of us going to get some sleep after all, the way that he yawns and tries not to show it. I return to my bed, lay there in the dark, watching the shadow of the quiet top bunk until morning. 


	5. Part One, Chapter Five

It's the next day when Abel is just there at lunch, sitting on the navigator's side of the mess hall, eating so quickly it's like he's racing all the other white-uniformed diners. I've got Deimos beside me for once, because Cain isn't there to take him from me, and I can practically feel the tension rolling off him. I have to nudge at him, make him get through the line, practically take his arm and drag him to a table on the fighter's side of the hall.

He doesn't eat, just sits there, staring across the divide at the Reliant's navigator, like if he stares hard enough the fighter will likewise appear, just like nothing's happened. He doesn't look as bad as they said, just one side of face a bit darker than the other, one arm wrapped into a sling, and if I wasn't so distracted by selfish thoughts I might point this out to Deimos, reassure him with it, that maybe the crash wasn't so bad after all.

Except everyone heard Abel's last transmission, Deimos included, so even if Abel hadn't fucked the landing, even if—

I don't realize what he means to do until he's happened, he's across the room, the untouched tray left behind like he's left me behind, gone to see Cain even when he's not even there. He has to have said something, offered something in his whisper, because Abel looks up from his food and stares. I'm torn between following after him and staying where I am, staying out of the way. Deimos leans over the table, fascinated by whatever it is that Abel's telling him. I can see his mouth moving, slowly, like he's unsure of the entire exchange, like maybe the words aren't even his to give.

Eventually I can't stand it anymore, the curiosity is too much, the jealousy too great. I leave my tray next to the one Deimos abandoned, arrive over Deimos' shoulder just in time to hear Abel say, "I'm heading over now. Did you want to come along?"

And Deimos nods so readily that I know exactly what they were talking about, exactly why Abel looks so confused, maybe a little wary, because he has to have figured out by now that there's something between his fighter and the small shadow at his constant side. He's too nice to refuse Deimos, however, too trusting, too innocent still even with the scar on his mouth. Up close I can see the dark smudges under his eyes that show his exhaustion, the effect highlighted by how pale he is, the whiteness seemingly reflected up out of his uniform.

Abel shifts his eyes to me, surprised, I guess, and that's what makes Deimos turn around, notice me at last. He edges away, eyes to the floor, every line of him tensed against my reaction, so I don't look at him, just look at Abel, and say, "Ethos was looking for you." It's a complete lie, but I can't very well admit to him that I came over just to eavesdrop. I think fast, so I don't bury myself deeper, compound the awkwardness. "If you're heading back to medical, I can just tell him you're busy."

"Oh," says Abel. He runs a hand over his eyes. "Thanks, Praxis. Yeah. I don't want – I should get back." He starts to collect his tray, somehow seeming even smaller than Deimos in that moment. I step forward, set my hand over his.

"I'll clean up," I offer. "You two go ahead." I look to Deimos for a moment, trying to be understanding, wanting him to know that I think he should go with Abel, go see Cain. It's eating me up inside, but all I can do is trust in him, trust in the little rasp of his whisper, always insisting to me that I mean more to him than Cain. I know I can't be the only one for him, not like he is for me, but so long as I'm something. I guess I have to be content enough with that.

Deimos isn't even looking at me, but somehow I think he's aware of me all the same. It makes me aware of how my hand is still over Abel's, how warm his hand is under mine, so I take it away quickly, try to smile at them both, so it's not awkward.

"Thanks," says Abel again. He gives me a strange look, like the whole exchange wasn't already weird enough, and nods his head to collect Deimos. They leave together, and I watch them go. I wonder if Deimos might look back, finally look at me when he hasn't even since he caught sight of Abel, but he doesn't. He just trails behind Abel, a little grey shadow, going after Cain again. 


	6. Part One, Chapter Six

I avoid going to medical because it seems wrong, voyeuristic in a way that hurts, because I know I’m the last person who should be at Cain’s bedside. It’s not him I want to see anyway, it’s Deimos, because I only ever see him at meals and meetings anymore. The night Abel took him away for the first time, I went and sat alone in our storage room for several hours, until I realized he wasn’t going to show up, that I was being stupid about it, and I found Ethos up in the top bunk with all the lights on since I forgot to tell him where I was going.

It isn’t like Cain’s a threat to me like he is, unconscious, something like a coma, so it sets dark lines of worry into Deimos and Abel’s faces. I only see Deimos briefly, because whenever he isn’t in medical he’s asleep, or training with Phobos, so that I know he’s avoiding me for some reason. It isn’t like him, it isn’t like us, to avoid each other when we already get so little time together. I don’t know what I could have done to upset him, other than the strangeness of the last time we had sex, the time I think I must have heard him wrong.

Alarms blare into the night, scaring everyone, so that the Red Team has to assemble and cover the Sleipnir’s retreat out of enemy space. The Reliant’s not among us, obviously, and it’s one fewer ship among many missing, so the absence is like a palpable wound. Ethos brings us in safely, and the other navigators as well, so there’s no smoke in the hanger this time, less chaos, but there’s a side of Deimos’ ship turned charred and dented, another miracle. He’s white-faced about it, shaky, him and his navigator clutching each other afterward, relieved it wasn’t worse, the navigator apologizing for it, Deimos looking so small and fragile that I get him alone later.

I’m the one who’s desperate, scared, so sure I was going to lose him, that I’m already losing him, because medical won’t let anyone except the wounded, and that’s the only reason I can get him alone. Deimos doesn’t say a word, not even his little sex talking, just clings to me in silence. The only sound is my own harsh breathing, whispered endearments, trying to tell him how much he means to me, why it’s fast for once, why I can’t be slow when I have so much to give him, so much to tell him, even though I’m not really saying anything.

We’re wrapped over each other afterward, tangled in my bed for once, with Ethos gone to help finish the trajectories with the rest of the navigators. Deimos huddles against me, seeming so small and fragile, so that I have to ask if he’s okay, if I’ve hurt him by being fast. He nods, shakes his head, doesn’t make a sound until later, when it’s almost peaceful, when he begins to cry. He’s still so quiet about it, only the soft, irregular hitch of breathing giving him away, the wet flutter of his lashes against my neck.

I panic, wonder if I’ve hurt him, maybe not physically but deeper, in the place where he gets scared and holds in all his pain, but he’s so tight against me, so needy, pushing every bit of his little body against me. He won’t say what’s wrong, just shakes his head when I ask, so I try to tell myself it’s just the battle, just the danger of it all that’s upset him, that it’s not my fault because of the way he huddles again me, small and fragile, needing me to hold him so he can stop crying.

Later I can’t sleep, spend the whole night staring up at the shadow of the top bunk, holding Deimos against me so I can feel the soft puff of his breath into my neck, feel the steady beat of his heart. Ethos comes in late, shuffling around in the dark. I can hear him, almost see him, pausing long enough to work out the shapes on the bottom bunk, making sure I’m there before he crawls up into the top bunk, leaves the lights off, only makes a small amount of sound later. It’s only because I can’t sleep, because I’m awake, that I can hear him at all.

In the morning there’s something different, something I can’t understand, but Deimos holds my hand in the lift because it’s just us and Ethos, and he eats slow rather than rushing through so he can sneak a few minutes into medical before the briefing, before training. He’s at my side nearly the entire morning, because we’re being kept busy, there’s lots to do, Ethos and I fussing over the Tiberius in case there’s another attack, Deimos and Phobos likewise busy. It’s enough just to be able to look across the hanger and see him, to find excuses to get closer, let our hands brush as I pretend to ask about engine calibrations.

It’s after dinner when he asks me, speaks to me for the first time in days, since the time I must have heard him wrong. Grey eyes gone soft, full of worry, like he’s afraid I’ll refuse, like he knows what he’s asking of me, offering me something I don’t understand and can’t get him to explain. I accept, and we hold hands in the lift because we’re alone, heading down to medical.

It’s quiet, smelling like sterile white and disinfectant, a hospital smell that I hate, that always makes me shudder. I can’t help but remember the last time I came here, carrying Deimos’ slight, limp weight in my arms, his face gone entirely to white under the bright lights, a horrible wet ruin of blood against his side, throat collared with swell and bruises so that each shallow breath wheezed and rasped but still so heartbreakingly quiet. I had to tell them I did it, that I would be so cruel to hurt him like that, had to let them take him away, take me away. I sat in the brig for weeks, not knowing if he was alive, if I’d made it in time, having nightmares where my hands closed over his throat, throttled him, so I woke shivering and wondering what was really a dream.

Deimos leads me through the narrow corridor with confidence, deep into the ward. Some of the doors are open, others closed, and the one to Cain’s room is open, split in two with a curtain. The front bed is empty, rumpled to as to suggest it might not have been before, and Deimos heads immediately for the other bed, going after Cain again.

He’s just tubing and plastic, white bandaging, something that’s pathetic and hard to hate. Machines beep and plink, making him seem fragile, seem almost small. Deimos’ eyes are so soft, he’s so quiet as he slips up beside the bed, as close as he can get with all the machines. He stands there a moment looking at Cain before turning, reaching for me, offering me his hand.

I feel like the whole room is made of glass, so fucking fragile just like him, making my steps clumsy, making me aware of my height, my size, a bull in a goddamn china shop. I can’t ruin this moment, can’t let him know how jealous I am, how resentful I feel of the wounded fighter lying in the narrow white bed. I just take his hand, give it a squeeze, stand next to him like he wants, like he needs.

I must have done the right thing, because he leans his head into my shoulder, resting against me, small, strong, fragile, tough, rough around the edges. I love him so intensely in that moment that it’s frightening, it blots out my petty jealousy, makes everything worth it.

I don’t hear anything, but he must. He shakes free of me, quick, skittish, because he doesn’t want to get caught, either just looking so needy and affectionate like he is, or just getting caught that way with me. There’s a decent amount of space between us, then, when Abel arrives. He’s holding his tablet in one hand, the other arm still bound in a sling, head down and not looking until he’s at the foot of the bed.

It must be hard for him, maybe harder for him than for Deimos. He’s got such dark circles, such deep lines of worry, looking so fragile, like he’s just barely holding together. Deimos tenses, shoulders square, back stiff, nostrils flaring like he’s scared even to breathe the same air as Cain’s navigator.

That’s when Abel lowers his tablet, sees the two of us, looks surprised. He recovers quickly, gives me a thin smile before studying the machines, peering at the numbers and lines like they mean something to him. “Nothing?” he asks Deimos.

Deimos shakes his head. He shifts, nervous all of a sudden, and reaches for a small paper cup beside the bed. He seems to offer it to Abel, offering something with it, so vague with the gesture because he wants to be quiet, needs to be silent. I can’t figure out how physically hard it is for him to talk, how much of his silence is psychological, because he’s so reluctant, always so ashamed about it, everything he says something of a secret. Right after I got out of the brig, he sounded worse than usual, still bruised, wincing sometimes when he would try to speak, but his voice has gone back to being just a little rasp, soft around the edges, hard all the way through, so beautiful to hear.

“Yeah, thanks,” says Abel. “Do you want anything to drink, Praxis?”

“Uh, no, that’s fine.” I look at Deimos, but he’s got his shoulders hunched slightly, rejecting me, sliding past me to leave the room still holding the little paper cup.

It’s just me and Abel, standing next to Cain’s bed. I’m not sure what to say. For a moment I think about how furious Cain would be to wake up right now and catch us like this, catch me getting close to the navigator with the scar, the one he claimed so everyone knew it. My heart goes a little faster, a little harder, and it’s like I can almost smell him, clean like linen, clean in a way that’s soft and pure rather than harsh and cold like the disinfectant that’s everywhere, that’s burning my nose and making my eyes itch.

“He’s supposed to wake up soon,” Abel offers, like I’m the one who needs consoling, or maybe he just likes to say it, like if he says it enough times it’ll be true. I think of his last transmission again, him starting to panic, voice breaking over Cain’s name, telling us the Reliant couldn’t fight, the fighter knocked out, him trying to hold it together to get the ship in safely.

Abel must be thinking the same thing, only from his perspective, so that I can almost see the sheen of the control panel in his dark eyes, the glow of the ship’s interior. It makes him look haunted, wounded in a way that’s deeper than the bruising along his face. I wonder if he’s like Ethos, unable to sleep at night without his fighter in the room, and I wonder if he loves Cain, if that scar’s become something real, if Cain treats him half so shitty as he treats Deimos, because Cain is a thoroughgoing bastard, colony trash of the worst sort, and Abel deserves better just like Deimos deserves better.

I’m around on the other side of the bed now, my feet having carried me there without thought. The smell of him is stronger, overwhelming. I say, “He’ll be okay.”

Abel nods, rubs at his face, and then shakes his head, sad and mournful, so that I know it was the wrong fucking thing to say. His shoulders tremble, he’s so fragile this way. His voice shakes as he says, “What if he’s not?”

It’s not the time to be jealous, not the time to remember the glow of the ship’s controls, the break of his voice in my ear, saving my life, being a navigator for me when mine was gone. His smell is like a poison, luring at me, because he’s so small and trying to look brave about it, so wounded because of this no-good fighter who I can’t stand, and he’s just like Deimos, trying to keep it together, all this trouble over Cain.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” Abel says, whispering, voice hoarse, a little rasp of his own.

I don’t think, it’s just pure feeling, pure instinct when I take him in my arms, let him rest his head against my shoulder. I think maybe he’ll fight me, push me away, but he just wilts into me, needy, wounded, wanting to someone to hug him and tell him, “He will. He’ll be okay, Abel. It’ll all be okay.”

Abel trembles against me, not crying even though he obviously wants to, obviously needs to, just like he obviously needs me to hold him like this, give him a little of my strength. He feels soft, clean, I can’t help but smell him, my nose against his pale hair, he’s taller than Deimos, maybe not so small but just as fragile in my arms. I should stop, I know I should stop, before Cain wakes up and murders me for this, before I forget myself and realize how wrong and right Abel feels pressed up against my chest.

“Everyone will be okay,” I tell Abel.

He nods, like maybe he believes me, or maybe he just needs someone to tell him that so fucking badly that he’ll accept it, even from me. His fingers tighten over my back, clutching, curling into me, maybe he’s actually crying now but just being silent about it, breath soft against my neck.

And it’s nothing, not even a sound, and then a small clatter, a paper cup hitting the floor, the splash of water against the tile. He’s on my blind side, the side with the patch, so it seems to take forever to jerk my head up, flinch toward where Deimos is standing, staring, not making a sound besides the noise the cup made being dropped.

It’s not until that moment that I realize he knows. I don’t know how he knows, I never told him, we never talked about it, maybe Cain told him, I don’t fucking know, but those soft grey eyes are wise, wounded, filling with hurt. He knows about Abel, my dark, lonely fantasies after he saved my life, became my navigator for just one desperate battle, became something pure that I wanted to save in return. And maybe Deimos knows why I ever went after him in the first place, wanted to hurt him, driven mad with grief and so angry with Cain, so afraid of him and of myself, of everything I wanted, so that I tried to use Deimos against him.

He’s frozen, staring, so quiet, start to shake, I can see the hurt building in him because I’m been an idiot, been cruel, hurt him because I didn’t think he knew, didn’t fucking think about it at all. And maybe I’m mad, because I saw him kiss Cain, he’s here because of Cain, and I don’t know why everything has to be like this when he matters so much to me. The cup stops rolling, everything’s quiet and frozen except the little tremble of Abel’s shoulders, the beeps and plinks of the machines, the rapid, stuttering, panicked beat of my heart.

Deimos breaks, turns, practically runs from the room. I push Abel from me, a half-second too late, much too late, and he still doesn’t know what happened, he just looks confused, maybe embarrassed, rubbing at his face like I won’t notice it’s wet, that he really has been crying against me, silent about it, wanting to seem tougher than he really is. I can’t just abandon him without any explanation, but I can’t very well explain either, and it’s alarm bells and sirens in my head, just as frantic as if we were under attack because that’s precisely what’s happening to me.

“Sorry,” says Abel. It’s nothing for him, just a little embarrassing, it was something nice for him, getting hugged like that, having someone comfort him. He tries to laugh but it’s just wet, miserable. He rubs harder, briskly, pulling at the bruises so it probably hurts, pulling himself together. “You’re right. Yeah, thanks, Praxis. You’re right.” He doesn’t sound convinced, the words are hollow, but he has to say them because anything else makes him so sad and scared.

I have no idea what I say to him, what excuse I give, and it doesn’t matter because eventually he’ll find the paper cup on the floor, see the puddle of water. And maybe he’ll frown at it, puzzle over it, wonder why I left so quickly, where Deimos has gone, but he’s got bigger worries than us.


	7. Part One, Chapter Seven

It takes a while to find him, because he’s so good at hiding, so good at being unseen, so quiet. The hallway outside medical is empty by the time I reach it, so I have to search through the Sleipnir, worry tightening my chest, twisting my stomach, quickening my heartbeat. I have to find him, try to explain, force him to have a conversation with me so I know he understands. The longer I look, the more frustrated I become, angrier I get, because he’s trying to think I feel anything for Abel like I feel for him, that it’s like how he is for Cain.

I check the storage room near the fighters’ base, the sim rooms, the hanger bay, everywhere I can think Deimos might hide. I even find the shaky section of scaffolding near the engines, the place he ran to hide once after Logos cracked his skull. I had to coax him down, half carry him, Ethos fretting the whole time like he both did and didn’t trust me with it, still so unsure of me, and Deimos small and fragile in my arms, senseless even when awake, so shaken and broken.

He isn’t there, he isn’t anywhere I look, so make his navigator answer the door, frown at me, tell me to go away, that he hasn’t seen Deimos. I start to do so, and then Phobos catches after me, still frowning, his pretty features making it seem almost kind even though what he says is ugly, full of scorn, “Did you check Porthos’ room?”

I turn, slowly, because he’s come up on my blind side. I’m sure he knows about us, seen me up in the top bunk with Deimos too many times, so I have some idea what he means even though I say, “Why would I look there?”

“Because,” he huffs, setting one hand on his hip. “Your boyfriend’s a whore. You have to watch him, or he’ll go after anything on two legs with a dick.”

I grit my teeth, remind myself of the fearful way he and Deimos clutched at each other in the hanger bay, remind myself that Phobos is just a whiny, jealous bitch. Their relationship seems to involve a lot of not talking to each other, they’re only middling in the rankings, but Deimos always seems so tolerant about it, so apathetic, so I have to wonder at this sudden animosity.

And stupidly, secretly, like some giddy teenager, I get small thrill at hearing Phobos say _your boyfriend_ , even if the rest of what he says is terrible, something I don’t want to think about. I don’t want to know who he’s been with besides me, it doesn’t matter so long as he’s with me now. I have to remind myself of that so I can stay calm, so I can say, “Don’t you mean _your_ boyfriend’s a whore?”

Dark purple fury and embarrassment twists his pretty face, makes him lift a fist like he wants to hit me, but he isn’t stupid, I’m taller and bigger, a fighter when he’s just a catty, gossiping navigator. “Go fuck yourself, Praxis.” He turns and doesn’t quite flounce back to his room.

I’m mad enough now, shaken by Phobos’ sneering comment, that I stop looking for Deimos. I won’t be able to stay calm if I try to talk to him about it now, I’ll just throwing more accusations, tangling the issues. I go back to my room, and of course Deimos there.

Maybe he’s been here all along waiting for me, maybe he was hiding and just now tried to find me, maybe Ethos found him first and brought him home like a stray, like the first time they met, when Ethos surprised me by apologizing about it, fearful like I’d be so angry at him for trying to help someone, and then the beaten up fighter he found turned out to be Deimos.

They’re both up in the top bunk, sitting close together, peering down like two birds on a wire, so I expect them to flutter away at the sight of me. Ethos looks so nervous I immediately know he’s aware of whatever this is between Deimos and I, this fight we’re going to have. Maybe they were talking about it before I walked in, or maybe he’s just judging by the tight, anxious way Deimos is sitting with his knees to his chest, arms around his ankles, and how I can’t relax my brow, can’t stop scowling, so angry and frustrated it hurts.

Neither one of them makes a move to get out of the top bunk, and I’m not so angry and stupid to climb up after them. I have some idea of what it means to Ethos, the high ground of his sanctuary, the difficult way it is for me to get my long legs up the ladder, the way he might stand a chance to fight me off if I tried to drag him down. I’m not like his old fighter, that monster Deimos killed, and I’m starting to get sick of him treating me like it, but it’s so hard to be angry at him for it when I hear the noises he makes at night. He’s never told me what Logos did to him, but I can imagine even if I don’t want to.

Deimos turns his face into Ethos’ shoulder, hiding from me, flinching with it, so that Ethos puts an arm around the little fighter and stares down at me with big, round, scared eyes. They’re just two scared, fragile little things, with me standing there feeling like a bully and hating it, hating everything about what’s happened.

I don’t want to feel guilty for hugging Abel when he needed a hug, as it was nothing more than what I’d give Ethos, if he’d let me get close, or even Phobos if he wasn’t such a whiny bitch about it. It’s not like for me how it is for Deimos with Cain, not anymore, not that it ever was, because I love Deimos so completely there isn’t room for anything else.

I start for the bunk, making Ethos flinch, making Deimos curl tighter, they’re both so afraid of me that it makes me even angrier, so frustrated with it, so all I want to do is shake the bunk until they topple from their perch, get to where I can hug them both to prove I can be calm about this, I can be gentle. That I’m not like that other fighter, the one who beat Deimos bloody, raped him, terrorized him, and God only knows what he did to Ethos when they shared a room, a locked door, so it’s no fucking wonder that Ethos looks so half-hopeful, half-scared of me all the time.

I grab my pillow, a blanket, jerking both from the mattress with a futile sort of rage. I stuff the pillow under my arm and just kind of bunch the blanket together, getting it up from the floor, not bothering to fold it. I can find somewhere else to go, the storage room by the fighters’ base. I’ve laid on that floor enough times to think it’s comfortable enough. It isn’t like I’ll be getting any sleep tonight anyway, worked up in knots with worry, making myself sick with it.

I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say, not when I’m still feeling angry and they’re both so frightened. I’m not going to bully them, not going to make this worse than it already is, I’ll wait until I can stay calm before I talk to Deimos, tell him again how much I love him, maybe make him understand what the hell love is, since he thinks he loves Sacha – _Cain_ , who is such a bastard that isn’t fair he gets to lie unconscious in medical, looking so fragile, something like a ghost between us anyway so I almost wish he’d just died instead.

It’s Ethos who says something, short and panicked all in a burst, “Where are you going?”

Because I didn’t tell him the other night, when I sat waiting for Deimos in the storage room until quite late, when I came back to find him in the top bunk with all the lights on, after I’d been so nice about it until then. I stop at the door with my bedding under my arm, turn so as to see them. Deimos, still drawn against my navigator to hide from me, but peeking from around his bangs now, watching me with soft, wounded grey eyes, and Ethos leaned forward, anxious, half-scared, half-hopeful. I can’t be nice to one without being cruel to the other, it seems, so I don’t know what’s the right thing to do, what I should do.

I just stand there, feeling stupid, feeling like a bully, hating the way they’re both just staring at me up in the top bunk with all the lights on. Ethos ducks his pale head of curls right up against the sleek black of Deimos’ hair, so they can whisper, but I’m good at listening to little raspy whispers that aren’t anything at all.

Ethos says, “Just talk to him, it’ll be okay.” And from the way he says it, the way he looks sideways at me, I know that Deimos didn’t tell him anything at all, probably just showed up looking lost and hurt, maybe said it was my fault without saying why.

“I’ll go,” says Deimos. He doesn’t look at me, so I know he’s angry, maybe scared, frustrated and hurt because he’s so fragile, he’s so sensitive, always letting himself get hurt because he thinks that’s easier, he think it’s what he deserves.

He shifts, crawls to the end of the bunk and scales the ladder easily, well practiced since he’s got a top bunk as well, maybe for some of the same reasons as Ethos, and it’s no wonder that they’ve become friends. I step toward him, thinking to put my bedding back, thinking we can go somewhere to talk and come back to find the mattresses set together on the floor, but Deimos stops me with a quick look.

“You stay,” he says. Fierce about it, rasping at me with his little voice, trying not to let me see how cut up he is inside, how much he’s hurting.

And maybe the smart thing to do would be to just let him have it, let him reject me, but I’m frustrated that he’s like this, that he’d let himself get so hurt and just accept. I don’t know why he won’t believe me when I tell him that I love him, and I wonder if it’s because he can only tell me that he loves me more than Cain – _Sacha_ , whose name I hate because I think he said it in his soft, raspy little voice that isn’t anything.

I throw my bedding at the bottom bunk. The pillow makes it but the blanket doesn’t, it just drapes partly over the edge of the bunk and mostly on the floor. He takes a step back, grey eyes going hard, looking fierce, arm carefully to one side like he’s going to whisk a knife down out of his sleeve, because he’s always on edge, always so tense, always braced for a fight. We just stare at each other for a long minute, with Ethos watching from above, so it’s all the more awkward because I have so much to say and none of the words to say it with.

Finally he breaks first, lets his arm fall lax against his side, looks up at the top bunk and nods like it means something. He shifts the intensity of his gaze to me, jerks his head toward the door, so we leave more or less together even if I’m careful not to touch him, not to startle him, because I know how fast he can turn sharp, can cut, how strong he is despite being so little, so fragile.

Out in the hall it’s all the more awkward, because we haven’t anywhere else to go. It would have been easier to send Ethos away, easier in some ways and harder in others. It’s a long trip down to the fighter base level, to our storage room, and it’s made all the longer and all the more awkward because neither of us says anything, we barely look at each other, just waiting until we can be alone. Even then it’s strange, neither of us knows how to start this conversation, because he hates to talk and I know it, I know he hates it, so I have to force him with it like this.

We’re each sitting on a storage crate, close but not close enough to touch, distance between us that goes beyond the physical. He’s looking down at his hands, the limp way he has them clasped between his knees, seeming so small because he is, because of the way he looked in the medical bay, grey eyes gone entirely to hurt.

It’s up to me to break the silence, but I’m not sure what to say. I’m still feeling angry, frustrated, full of accusations, full of questions that I might not want to answer to. We just sit there, close together, not close enough to touch.

And then he speaks first, surprising me with his little rasp, the sweet rarity of it, the way it’s rough around the edges but still soft. “Sorry,” he says. Still not looking at me, seeming so small with the way he’s hunched over himself, face turned aside so he’s just a curtain of black hair. “Not mad.”

It’s something like a punch to the gut, somehow worse than if he’s just pulled a knife and cut me. I have to swallow, feeling the lump in my throat the whole way down. “I’m not mad either,” I say.

He shoots such a glance over to me that I know he hears the lie in my voice, knows that I’m angry somewhere deep inside. He hunches himself even smaller. Says, “Know you like Abel. Not mad.”

I can hear the lie in his voice as well, except he’s almost telling the truth, because he isn’t angry, just sad and scared, upset with it, maybe as frustrated as I am. I’d rather that he be furious, that he hate me for it, that he get jealous and want to possess me, just like how I feel about him. I don’t want him to think that Abel could replace him, that anyone could replace him, that I’m only with him because he’s there, because he let me push him to the floor and hold him down.

It’s like a growl, something terrible, full of all the dark frustration inside me, the helpless way I can’t get him to ever believe me when I tell him how important he is, how much he matters, how much I love him so that it makes me weak, jittery, warm inside and wanting.

“And you love Cain.” I don’t know why I say it, why my throat and mouth conspire against me to ruin everything, to hurt him further.

It works. Oh, it works. He becomes so impossibly small, so wounded, so the next thing out of him isn’t anything, it’s barely air, but it cuts right into me sharper than any knife. Says it so small, in such a little voice, “Love you more.”

Like he’s apologizing for it, like it’s an excuse, something desperate he wants to give me, has to tell me. I see a shiver run over him, and I see the way it lingers so that his knees shake together until he presses them closed, trapping his hands, so impossibly small. This isn’t the way I want to have this conversation, this isn’t what I want to say to him, this isn’t what I should be telling him.

I say it anyway. Can’t really stop myself, can’t really think about it. “I’ve never fucked Abel.”

He knows what I mean, what I’m referring to, and it’s terribly cruel of me to bring it up but I just can’t stop myself. I can see the flush to his cheeks, the heated shame of it, the way he flinches and curls, knees going to his chest so he’s just perched on the edge of his crate. “You want to,” he says quietly, so quiet, rasping it in a way that’s thick, choking, betraying how hurt he is.

And it makes me so angry. I clench my hands into fists, resist the urge to yell, grit my teeth and say, “No. I don’t.”

His shoulders slowly come together and then fall apart. 

“Deimos. Deimos, look at me.” I wait until he obeys, dragging his eyes up from the floor and flicking them over my face, fast at first, and then slow, searching. I say his name again, make sure he’s listening. “Deimos. You’re the only one I want.”

He scowls, becomes a tight, tense ball of rejection, clearly doesn’t believe me, so it’s infuriating because I don’t know what else to do. He doesn’t say anything, he’s done talking, he’s terrible at conversations and I don’t know if it physically hurts him to talk or if he just hates doing it, hates the way he sounds because he hates so much about himself that it drives me crazy. I have to get closer to him, show him rather than tell him, but he scrambles back, puts the crate between us, so he’s on one side and I’m on the other.

He looks so panicked backed up against the wall, wide-eyed and staring. I’m not exactly sure what I’ve done, why he’s acting like this. I hesitate, so the moment stretches, twists, becomes something even worse between us before I finally decide to pursue him. He’s got to move further back into the room, I’m between him and the door, and he stumbles blindly in retreat like I’m something to be afraid of, like he doesn’t trust me, so it hurts and makes everything worse.

I get him into the corner, against the wall, put my hands on either side of the stiff, hopelessly brave square of his shoulders. He’s so tense he’s vibrating, trembling, staring at me with brilliant intensity, so dangerous even though he’s so small. I don’t think about it, just do it, lean forward and kiss him, wanting him so desperately, loving him so that it hurts.

He pushes at me, lips tight, jaw set, unyielding to my affections. He tries to turn his face away, tries to get free of me, so I have to grab him, hold him, make him understand that I love him. We fight about it, struggling over each other, where I’m trying to be gentle and he’s starting to panic. I let him go when he starts to make noises, little broken whimpers, when I realize he won’t calm down otherwise. I am so frustrated, so scared, because I don’t want to lose him, because I’m already starting to lose him, because maybe I never had him in the first place.

“Want – Abel,” he says, breath hitching because he’s gotten frantic. He backs away, arms tight over his chest. He’s forgotten that he’s strong, that he’s sharp and dangerous, just looking at me in fear, like I’d ever want to hurt him. He flushes, turns his face to the side, still watching me from the corners of his eyes. “Not like me. Not a—“ His arms tighten, the little rasp turned choking, because whatever terrible thing he wants to say about himself is painful.

It’s for the best, since I don’t want to hear it, don’t need to hear it. He lets me get close again, and I move slow because he’s so wary. I brush at his hair, getting the long bangs off his face, so I can see the wounded fear in his eyes. He’s searching my face again, pleading at me without words, so I almost know what he was going to say. It isn’t hard to compare Abel and Deimos and figure out where his insecurities are.

I go slow, willing to stop this time if he pushes, but he doesn’t. His mouth parts under mine, his eyes flutter shut, he lets me kiss him, deep and slow. I put all my tenderness into it, all the warmth in my heart, trying not to show my anger anymore, trying to forgive him for everything. Afterward I keep our faces very close together, almost bent at the knee so he doesn’t have to get up on his toes. I stroke at his hair, worrying over him, worrying how I’ll ever be able to make this right if he won’t believe me.

“Deimos. I love you. You’re the only one I want. There is no one else for me, okay?” He looks so doubtful, so confused, like he just doesn’t understand it, like he isn’t something precious and beautiful, something rare for me to treasure. I wish so desperately that he could love himself a little, just so he’d know what it felt like.

And I know what I have to say, even if I don’t want to. “I might have – I did want Abel, at one point, but not now. I don’t anymore. He could show up in my room begging for it, and I still wouldn’t want him. I don’t love Abel, I love you. Deimos? I love you. Really, I do. There’s no one else for me.”

At last he nods. Slow about it, not looking at me, maybe a little embarrassed and deeply ashamed. He looks so hurt about it still, so confused and tormented by it. His arms go around my neck, pressing his little body all up against mine with deep, wounded need. He’s pleading at me without words, shaking because he’s so tense about something, ready to cry even though he’s quiet.

I hold him, because I’ll always want to put my arms around him when he gets like this, because he’s so small and fragile, always trying to be so tough about it, and I love him so desperately. I know he won’t tell me what’s wrong if I ask, that it’ll only upset him more, so I let it go. I let go of everything except the warm feel of him against my chest, the cold little nudge of his nose against my neck, the way I can almost pick him up against me, his feet hardly touching the ground.

I realize it’s because he wants to tell me the same thing and can’t, that he’s so torn up inside because of how he feels for Cain. He’s slowly spiraling out of control with it, the erratic circles becoming wider and further, never able to get away and always drawn back into the chaos. And I’m at the center of it all trying to catch him, but he keeps getting pulled away, torn apart.

I have to trust it’ll be okay, I have to give Deimos the time and patience he needs to break free. I know it’s different, the way he feels about Cain and the way he feels about me, I know it’s different even if I can’t get him to realize it. I’m not sure he understands it, but that’s okay. I just have to give him time, prove to him that I’m different, that what we have is different. It’ll be okay because Cain’s an asshole, even if he’s something sweet for his navigator in bed, he’s still callous, unpredictable, nothing at all like what Deimos deserves, what he needs. I just need Cain to wake up and prove it.


	8. Part One, Chapter Eight

He’s being loud again. It’s woken me up, the moment disorienting because of how everything’s so dark, darker on one side than the other, because I always forget about my eye when I wake up suddenly like this.

We’ve got the mattresses pushed together, Deimos staying the night because he spent all day in medical, watching Cain sleep because that’s all Cain ever does anymore, something like a coma he’s supposed to wake up from but hasn’t. I haven’t gone back to medical since the time I hugged Abel. Deimos hasn’t invited me back, and I’d only want to go for his sake anyway.

It’s not until I’m fully awake, really alert, that I realize Deimos is pressed up against me, shivering and whimpering in his sleep. It isn’t Ethos this time, which makes sense, because he’s usually quiet on the nights Deimos stays over, like having two fighters in the room when he’s trying to sleep makes it all the safer, or maybe because he trusts Deimos when he doesn’t trust me. The expression about trusting people farther than you can throw them seems apt, since the two of them are just so little, or maybe it’s something else, something between them that’s simple when everything else has to be so complicated.

It’s terrible, listening to Deimos whine in his sleep, worse than with Ethos because of how broken he sounds, the noises fracturing out of his throat like shattered glass. He’s so shivery, clammy and cold, sweating with fear, pressed close against me in a way that makes it hard to swallow, that makes my chest feel tight and warm.

“Deimos.” I whisper, because even though he woke me with it he’s being quiet, so fucking quiet it scares me, makes me feel panicked. I don’t want to wake Ethos, because I know Deimos well enough to understand he’s not going to want a big fuss over a nightmare. “Deimos?”

I turn on my side toward him and then lift on to my elbow. He comes after me, needy and desperate, the soft, quiet little cries sharpening with distress when I move. I get a hand on his shoulder and shake him, frightened now, anxious to make him stop, terrified by how miserable he sounds. I shake him harder, and then it happens.

He lashes out, breaks away from me at the same time, so it’s just a flurry of movement and jutting limbs. I catch his elbow right in the face, right into my nose, and maybe a couple kicks over my body as he scrambles to get free of me, tries to fight before he’s really all that awake. I hiss and moan, holding a hand around my nose and feeling the wet drip that tells me it’s bleeding.

I pick myself up from the bed, slow, because I don’t know if he’s realized that it’s me, if he’s woken up enough to know where he is. I flinch at the feel of his hands, but he’s fluttering at me with concern, just an anxious shadow in the dark, mostly touch and noise. He’s breathing hard, making short, shallow, panted rasps, and tangled in between are words. “Sorry, Sacha. Sacha, I’m sorry, sorry—“

I can’t help it, I push him away, shove him as hard as I dare and maybe more, because there’s no fucking way I misheard him this time, no fucking way the little noises aren’t real words. “Deimos, wake the fuck up!” I snap, actually yell at him, so angry and frustrated because my face hurts, my heart hurts, I hope he hasn’t broken my nose and I don’t know about my heart, but I can’t stand to hear him call me Cain’s stupid _tsygan_ name.

I hear the soft shift behind me that says we’ve woken Ethos after all, pretty damn hard not to now that I’m yelling, but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s going to try and pretend to still be asleep, like how I’m pretty sure he wasn’t asleep when we came in earlier, tumbling over each other and kissing, finding a comfortable way to fit together for sleep.

Deimos is still breathing hard, panting, hitched in such a way I think he might be crying, or maybe he’s just falling apart because he’s woken up enough to realize I’m not Cain, that Cain’s just some fucking wounded fighter lying in a hospital bed, might as well be a ghost for all the good it does.

I get to my feet, hand still cupped over my nose to catch the blood, head tipped back so I can taste the copper tang in the back of my throat. It takes a second to get oriented even though the room is so small, and I shuffle so I don’t run into Deimos on my way to the bathroom. The light’s blinding for a long, wincing moment, until my eye can adjust.

It’s not pretty, my reflection in the mirror, because of the scarred up empty socket and the lurid red streaks from my nose. I hang my head over the sink, let the blood flow for a while, run the faucet and splash water until the bleeding stops.

He’s behind me when I straighten upright, just a small shadow in the mirror, watching me with bone-deep wariness that tells me he isn’t sure at all what’s happened. It’s almost scary, how quiet he can be, how I didn’t hear him come in. I wonder if Ethos is still pretending to be asleep, and something of a hysterical thought.

I turn to face him, so we don’t have the mirror’s reflection between us, so I’m leaned against the sink and he’s leaned against the door, and it’s such a small space but at least he isn’t too close. I’m so angry, so frustrated, unable to forget the soft little rasp of his voice, frantic and thick with sleep, apologizing to _Sacha_ , so that I wonder what the fuck he was dreaming about in the first place.

He’s staring at my face, at the bruised up ugliness of my nose. He’s figured out it’s his fault, but he doesn’t know why, I can see that plain as day looking at him.

I have to say something, but I’m ready to start thrashing him I’m so angry. He speaks first, so quiet, rasping it at me even though we’re not close together, we’re as far as we can be in the cramped space of the bathroom. He voice is sweet, soft, worried. “What happened?”

“You called me _Sacha_.” I spit the name like poison, like something vile stuck in my throat. It’s not much of an explanation, since he was clearly asking about my nose, but it’s the only thing I can focus on so it’s what he gets from me.

He shakes his head, hugs himself, looks very small. “Dreaming,” he says. He looks up at me, grey eyes gone soft, searching over my face with brilliant intensity. “Sorry, dreaming. Wasn’t here, wasn’t –didn’t mean to.”

“What about the other day? You sure as hell weren’t dreaming then.”

His brow knits together, anxious. He tries to come toward me but I push him back, keep him at arm’s length, because if he gets close and starts pressing against me all needy and scared again I’ll break, he’ll have broken everything about me, because I’ve given him so much and I don’t think he knows it. I don’t think he understands.

“You called me Sacha when I fucked you,” I say. And then, building on that, unable to stop myself, “Is it because you were thinking about him? Wishing I was him?”

The accusation hits and sinks deep. I know I’m wrong by the horrified way his eyes widen, the plunging ferocity of his brow immediately afterward, the hard edge to his mouth. It’s just silence between us, my stupid incorrect assumption and paranoia hanging in the air, and then he’s the one who breaks, right down the middle, so neatly falling into pieces that I can almost hear the crack.

“Didn’t!” It’s loud, and not just for him, so it scares me because he’s so usually quiet. “Would _never_!”

And it’s so loud, he actually yells it, his little voice lifting into a shriek, so that it’s the sound of him breaking, a perfect crack down the middle. Something terrible happens to his face, the way it drains of color, and his chest heaves around a shuddering, airless, horrible noise. He’s so raspy, so breathless, that I’m frantic for a moment with the fear that he’s hurt himself somehow. I catch at him, grab his shoulders, touch lightly at his neck as if I know what the hell I’m doing before he grabs for me, clings to me, digs his nails into my shoulders like little claws.

I realize he’s just scared himself by yelling, broken that dreadful psychological barrier he has, maybe actually hurt his throat some, but he’s having a panic attack, begun to hyperventilate. I’ve seen him do this once before, the last time I heard his little voice shatter, the morning after I kissed him for the first time, and realized only much later that there’s something about kissing that makes him fragile.

He’s fragile now, breaking in my arms and cutting so deep that my anger just floats away like a balloon with cut strings. I try to sooth at him, beg him to calm down and breathe slow, but he’s still just making an awful, wretched noise in place of actual breathing. He’s so frantic, trying to clutch at me, that I can’t talk any reason into him, can’t get him to just calm down and breathe slow like I know he can.

I can reach the shower, just barely, because he’s so small that he can’t hold me in place easily, I’m strong enough to force him into the stall. I crank the water so it’s freezing, dousing the both of us. It makes him gasp, so he’s actually breathing now, sputtering and choking as I hold him under the spray. I keep him there until we’re both shivering, until he’s trying to push away from me so that I know he’s regained his senses.

I turn the water off, stand there dripping, both of us a little breathless now and just trying to figure out what to do next. He’s blue-lipped and pale, shivering so pathetically, looking half-drowned and miserable. I realize most of the water on his face is from crying, but he isn’t making a sound about it, he’s back to being quiet, and I see him swallow like it hurts.

“Sorry,” I say softly. It’s thick, hard to say, because there’s such a lump in my throat. I’ve hurt him, I can see how much I’ve hurt him, getting knotted up in jealousy when I promised myself to be patient with him, to be understanding ever since he first told me he loved Cain. He’d looked so miserable about it, he always looks so miserable about it, there’s never any joy in the way he talks about Cain.

“Deimos, I’m sorry.” I put a hand to his face, and he flinches his head aside, eyes closed, crying without making a single sound. He just stands there, lets me pet at him, lets me stroke the wet hair from his eyes and pull our cold bodies together. I tell him, “I’m so sorry.”

And then he speaks, painfully hoarse, sounding just like he did after I’d gotten out of the brig. “Didn’t,” he says. And again, even quieter, so quiet it’s nothing. “Would never.”

“I know,” I say, even though it’s a lie. I don’t know, because I don’t trust him, because I’m so angry and jealous that I hate it, I hate feeling this way.

He brings his head into my shoulder, so I can feel something shudder through all the cold shivering. I brisk my hands over his arms, his back, trying to warm him. Our nightclothes are soaked through, so it’s useless to try, but I do it anyway.

“Called me Abel,” he says. “When he fucked me. Thought about Abel. Called me Abel. Wouldn’t – wouldn’t do that to you.” And then, so small, so fragile, not anything as he says, “Know it hurts.”

It’s a lightning flash of memory as I remember the night he showed up at my door, bruised and bitten, shaken, hollow-eyed and vacant like the worst kind of a trauma victim. I thought Logos or someone else had found him, brutalized and raped him, but he told me it was Cain, that he wanted it. I didn’t know what to think until later, when he told me about Sacha and it sort of made sense, because Cain sure as hell doesn’t love him back, and that’s the last miracle I have to use because I’d never be holding Deimos like this otherwise.

I close my eyes, swallow something wet, clench my jaw because he doesn’t need me to start crying, because he needs me to be strong. I’ve got him warm enough, pressed against my body, but he’s still shivering. It’s the bone-deep hurt from that night all over again, the helpless way he held on to me, shaking so fearfully, hurt so deep.

“Dreamed he did it again,” he says. “Didn’t – didn’t want him to. Thought you were him when I woke up. Thought we – thought I—“ He doesn’t finish the sentence, but it’s the most words I’ve ever heard him say all at once.

It’s about the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and I wish we weren’t having it, I wish I had another miracle to use so we wouldn’t have to ever have this conversation. I feel so helpless, I don’t know what to do, how to make this right between us, because I just keep trying and keep feeling like I’m failing.

He tips up toward me, straining on to his toes because I’m so much taller, and kisses my cheek. He’s careful about my nose, and his hand finds the back of my neck, his fingers curl into my hair. It’s such a fragile little gesture when he does it, reminding me of all the times he’s done it before, so I hold him even closer, get my arms around his hips and pull his legs around my waist. I step back, leaning against the sink, so we’re just two cold, wet bodies with all this warmth caught between us.

He touches at my neck, explores the line of my jaw, fingers so small and almost ticklish. He reaches for my nose and then stops, hesitates, pulls his hand away. “Sorry,” he says.

He woke up and thought I was Cain, so he hit me, fought free of me, panicked about it, so it doesn’t make any sense, I don’t know what he really wants. I don’t think he does either, which is the worst part of it all. He’s looking at me so anxiously, searching over my face with his soft grey eyes, pleading at me without words again.

I slide my hand up the back of his wet tank top, parting the cold fabric from cold skin. He shifts, lets me strip the top from him, and when we kiss it’s painful because of my nose. He realizes it, starts to pull away, but I keep him close, kiss him deeply because I don’t care that it hurts. He pushes back, a small sound from his throat, something needy and affectionate, and then we’re fighting over each other to get rest of the sodden clothes dropped to the floor.

He drops to the floor as well, gets to his knees and puts me against the wall. I put a hand into his hair, gentle, not pushing him deeper but just holding him steady. He’s so good at this, working his mouth around my throbbing cock.

We’d gone to the storage room earlier, rolled around on the floor and fucked slow, but it seems like forever rather than just a few hours ago. There’s such desperation, we both feel it, that mad sort of fever that follows fighting, so my knees are shaking because he’s so good with his mouth. I want more than just his mouth, he knows it, and he looks up at me with startling intensity, eyes burning, so I grab his arm and pull him to his feet, kiss him so my face hurts, so I can taste the clean, wet scent of myself on his tongue.

I knock the mirror aside, scatter half the items off the cabinet shelves before finding something to slick him with. He’s all over me, I’m all over him, hot mouths and eager hands, clean, cold skin that’s starting to warm. I get him ready hastily, quickly, remembering to be gentle and take my time as much as I can given the strange urgency of it all.

It’s such a small space, cramped and difficult to find anywhere to put him. We end up with me against the sink again, his knees carefully balanced on the ceramic, thighs close against my side, and my arms holding him, his hands braced against my shoulders.

He lowers himself with one smooth motion, hot inside, still tight in a way that’s good, so that it draws a moan from me and a humming little noise from him, a fluttering sort of approval. I thrust up, try to get a good angle with the way I’m leaned against the sink, and it’s a bit awkward for a moment until we find a rhythm to it. It’s intense, the way he’s lifted against me, so we have to go slow because there’s just not an angle for it otherwise. It’s rolling hips and deep thrusts, his whole body flexing and moving against me.

“Pah! Aahn.” He’s talking already, soft little sounds that aren’t anything, head falling back so he’s just so fucking beautiful, hair damp, eyes half-closed, warm as he moves into me. And then he says it, a little sound that’s definitely something, “ _Aahn_. _Praxis_.”

Neither of us lasts long, so it’s like we were being fast even though the motions were slow. My knees are shaking so bad, I can just barely hold him up long enough for us both to finish, and it’s only later when we’re sprawled on the tile, tangled around each other, jutting elbows and knobby knees, that I realize something.

It’s the first time he’s ever said my name, called me anything, and I turn my face into his back, hold him there so he can’t turn around, not caring that it’s hurting my face. I don’t want him to see the tears until I can get them to stop, suck back into my face so they never happened, so when we shuffle around later trying to put the bathroom in order he won’t notice anything.

Ethos is up against the wall, still curled over his pillow, either having gone back to sleep or just pretending. We’ve hung our wet clothes across the bathroom to dry, so I find us each something out of the dresser. Deimos ends up in a civilian shirt of mine, the hem almost long enough to preserve modesty, and we try to be quiet in case Ethos really is asleep.

We curl tight against each other, fall asleep wrapped close and wake up just the same way. He’s already awake, just watching me, fingers brushing through my hair so softly that he could have been doing it for hours without waking me. I kiss him, with just a little flare of pain from my nose, and it’s so slow and sweet, he’s so affectionate, that’s it feels close to perfect like it hasn’t since a smoke-filled hanger or since before that, since sirens first cut the night.

On our way to breakfast, Abel finds us. He smiles in a way that’s terrifying because of how relieved he is, how much fear he can finally let show in his eyes despite the smile, and it just takes one look at his face to know what’s happened, to know that Cain’s awake.

 

 

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Nothing_but_the_Rain recorded [audio](https://soundcloud.com/kantgirl/phoenix-chapter-eight) of this chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part One, Praxis POV. The next chapter will be the start of Part Two, Deimos POV.


	9. Part Two, Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Deimos POV)

“Oh,” says the little navigator. I’ve been wondering when he’d show up, when either of them would get here, because I’m just sitting outside their door like some lost fucking puppy or maybe a dead grey mouse dragged home by the cat or, fuck, it hurts to think so I don’t want to anymore.

He looks nervous at the sight of me, eyes gone rounder than usual, but he’s trying to smile, trying to be cheerful about it like he’s happy to see me. He steps toward the door, so I stand up to let him have access to the panel. “Praxis went for a run,” he says. “Down at the fighters’ base. I don’t think he’s here.”

Well no shit, because I rang and rang and leaned against the panel until maybe I broke it and no one answered. I don’t say anything, though, I just stand there and wait for him to either tell me to go away or invite me in, one or other, bring the stray inside or kick him to the curb.

“Were you able to see Cain?” he asks. He’s trying to be nice, trying to smile, but he just looks so worried. He steps inside and doesn’t say anything about me coming in after him, just looks at me with that wavering sort of smile, so I realize it’s implied, like I’m always welcomed, and it’s awkward because it’s about the nicest thing that’s happened to me since I went to medical.

I nod, don’t elaborate, don’t want to think about what happened, just get inside his room. The bunks are put back together after last night, making the room seem strange, since normally they’re down to make the big bed on the floor when I come here.

“That’s good,” he says. And it’s like a question, so that I wonder what he thinks he knows or maybe what he really knows, if him and the fighter haven’t been talking about me behind my back, and it’s a hot, fluttery kind of feeling where I’m ashamed about a lot of things and just want everything to be over.

It’s like I’m in the ship again, listening to my navigator’s squeaking curses, red lights flashing and heart in my throat, everything spinning because we’ve gotten hit, and it’s just a tense moment where I don’t know if we’re going to die, if he’ll have to smash us into the hanger bay, so we can be something that burns and causes nightmares, and I’ve got so many regrets and final thoughts but no one to share them with. It feels just like that all over again all the time, only there’s no one to steer the ship but me, and since I’m the one hit up one side and broken it just makes for a lot of slow, out of orbit spiraling.

I’m sitting on the bottom bunk without even having thought about it. A soft, fluffy little lamb is standing in front of me frowning, all puzzled up and anxious, trying to ask if I’m all right. I nod at him, because it’s easier than trying to explain.

The pillow smells like the scarred-over lion, just slightly, like sunshine and heat, so I lay my head against it, burrow into the bedding, try to pretend the blankets are him. I remember to kick off my boots first, huddle my legs close to my chest, turn to face the wall like I’m some pale lump at the end of a makeshift big bed. I get why the navigator sleeps like this now. It’s soothing, because this is the fighter’s bed, even if I’m just imagining it, because whenever they take down and put the bed back together again they don’t keep track of which mattress goes where or what blankets are whose. It doesn’t smell like him, I just want it to, and it’s just a stupid pillow that I close my eyes and curl around, because he isn’t here.

“Deimos?” he asks, sharp with concern now. “Deimos, are you okay?”

I don’t say anything. It’s rude, I guess, since he was nice enough to let me into the room.

I feel the slight weight of him sit on the edge of the bunk. “What’s wrong? Is it – is it about the fight last night with Praxis?”

Because obviously I woke him up with it, thrashing around from a stupid nightmare, dreaming I was some goddamn recruit in a skinny top bunk getting fucked, waking up confused and upset. I know the sound carries from the bathroom to the rest of the room, or at least, sound carries from the rest of the room to the bathroom, so maybe he heard the whole stupid conversation. And maybe he knows about Sacha now, because apparently I can’t keep my mouth shut and have to tell everyone the worst about myself.

When I don’t say anything, he doesn’t press it further. I feel his hand against the back of my head, his fingers just barely brushing through my hair, almost petting at me with tenderness. He pulls his hand away after a moment, and then he just sits there, kind of close but not really, maybe watching me, maybe not. I’ve got my eyes closed, my face buried from the light, trying so hard to just not think about anything anymore.

Maybe if I can fall asleep I can wake up and the nightmare will be over. I can wake up kicking again, almost break the fighter’s nose, make him so angry that I don’t know what to do, say all the wrong things and then keep talking, break myself with it.

I just don’t want to think about it all anymore, and it fucking sucks that I can’t. I should have gone down into the fighters’ base, let myself get bruised around to earn a bottle of contraband, drank the whole thing in the lift back up to the dorms, drank enough to stop thinking, even if just for one night.

I really am almost asleep when the door whisks open, just a soft hush of sound, and the navigator bolts to his feet. It’s something like a dream to listen to, the quiet of his boots against the floor, the first few faltering steps of the fighters’ boots, and then the navigator whispering, all in a rush, “Can I talk to you?”

The fighter doesn’t say anything, or maybe he’s just quiet enough I can’t hear, because it’s the little lambs bleating plea that comes next, “Please, Praxis. In the hall. I think he’s asleep.”

Oh, good, so they are going to talk about me. They can swap notes on how I’m clearly not okay, like I need some tag-team effort of coordinated concern to figure out that everything’s spinning out of control. I haven’t felt right since the Reliant’s navigator first burst over the communication channel, frantic, letting everyone know that he’d fucked up and nearly killed his fighter.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about, just don’t fucking think about. I cringe into a tighter ball, fight panic, feel a lot of things really intensely so it scares me, so I can’t even sort out the emotions. Maybe I’m a goddamn recruit in a skinny top bunk still, maybe I’m something sweet on a storage room floor, maybe I ought to focus on just being a little grey mouse so no one notices me.

The door opens again, letting in the sound of their voices. “—tell you again, Ethos.”

Apparently they’re not done talking, but the fighter’s done listening by the sound of it.

“Praxis, I know that, I’m not—“

“You are saying it, Ethos.” He sounds pretty upset, frustrated so that he seems angry.

“I just—“

“You think I—?” He remembers to lower his voice, since I’m supposed to be sleeping, and I wish this was all a dream. He doesn’t speak so softly that I can’t hear, so it’s like the words are being spoken right into my ear rather than across the room. “Look at him. He’s in the bottom bunk. He’s in _my_ bed.”

“Oh,” is all the little navigator says.

“Did it look like he was mad at me this morning? Like I’d hurt him?”

“No.” And I can hear the blush.  “I’m sorry, Praxis.”

There’s a long pause, and then the fighter says, “You know, I—“

“I know,” the navigator says quickly. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I said anything. I’ll – I’ll leave you two alone for a bit.”

“Ethos, wait—“

But the door opens and closes, so I wonder if the fighter went after him or let him run away. I don’t have to wonder long, because there’s the slow tread of boots against the floor, the way the edge of the mattress sinks. He takes off his boots, maybe his jacket judging by the shift of fabric and the way the bunk creaks.

I feel his hand against my shoulder, and I tense for a moment, not wanting to be disturbed, not wanting to let him see how upset I am even though all I want for him to do is hold me, be gentle with me like he always is. It’s hard, forcing myself to stay calm, to let him roll me out of my ball and on to my back.

I open my eyes, find him staring down at me, and I feel like maybe I’ll cry because it seems like that’s all I ever do anymore, ever since the smoke in the hanger bay burned my eyes and made them feel gritty, like I’d never be clean again no matter how much I tried to cry away the stinging.

He strokes my cheek with the back of his hand, knuckles a bit rough so it’s nice, it isn’t so soft that it breaks me further.  I let my eyes close again and tip into the touch. Swallow hard so I don’t cry, hate myself for being so weak. I’m afraid again, scared all the way deep down, that he’ll get tired of always having to pick up my pieces. I don’t know what he likes better, what he wants, the whole of me or when I’m broken like this.

It’s so soft, the way he kisses me, so gentle. Just pressing his lips to mine, telling me something without words. His hand brushes at my face more, pulling my bangs aside like he always does, like he wants to see all of me, like maybe there’s something worth seeing. He helps me sit up, kind of forces me into it, kind of doesn’t, because I just go along with his hands, let him position me around like I’m some limp doll.

He’s gentle about it, getting me seated on the edge of the bunk with him, slowly taking off my jacket and socks, my pants, undressing me for bed without saying a word. He smells clean, fresh-scrubbed skin, his hair wet along the back and top so I know it’s because he showered after his run. I wish he hadn’t, I wish his scent would be stronger, because I’ve spent so much time in medical that blistering lemon-fresh cleaner has seared into my nose.

I guess he gets ready for bed as well, fiddling around the room, putting our jackets and boots away, running the sink and drinking a glass of water. I sit right where he left me, staring between my knees, just waiting for him to get back so maybe we can sleep, so maybe I’ll wake up and realize this whole day was a dream.

I don’t mean to startle when he comes over, but I do. I was letting my attention drift, thinking about things again, so it’s a violent little shudder that I make when he touches my arm. It gives him pause, sets wariness into his expression. He finally says something to me, asks, “Are you going to stay here tonight?”

I shrug.

“You’re welcome to,” he says hastily.

I shrug again, still looking at my knees. It’s a bit of a stupid question since he’s undressed me already, left me sitting in just my tank top and underwear. And it’s almost nice when I realize I hadn’t even thought about it otherwise, hadn’t consider that he wouldn’t want me to, wouldn’t let me. I hadn’t thought about it because I’m trying very hard not to think about anything, but it’s something nice all the same.

The lights are off now, plunging the room in darkness but for the little glow of the panels. He sits beside me on the bed, his long legs making it look less comfortable for him than it is for me. He doesn’t say anything, just sets an arm around my shoulders and brings me into his side, holding me in a way that’s simple and kind of nice, so fucking gentle I kind of hate it because it makes me want to cry.

I curl into him, set my nose into his neck and try to lift the scent of him from the clean skin. I’m pawing at him, crawling over him, seated all the way in his lap and huddled against him because I don’t know what else to do anymore. Maybe beneath all the scrub and clean there’s some of him, but it’s faint, it’s so faint and all I can smell is disinfectant.

“It’s okay,” he says, because he’s a liar, but it’s kind of nice. He doesn’t even know what happened to me down in medical, but he’s nice about it anyway, so gentle I can’t stand it. He rubs my back, holds me to him, kisses my hair. “Deimos, you’re okay.”

I’m not, but it’s nice of him to say it anyway. That’s how he is, that’s how this is, and now I’m trembling, shuddering, trying to keep everything inside and maybe not succeeding. I’m being pulled in so many different directions, having my pieces scattered so far away I can’t see half of them, they’re like the glittering multitude of stars, each one cold and distant.

He soothes at me, hushes me even though I’m not making a sound. I guess we just sit like that until I can stop thinking, go still again, become something pliable and easy for him to put into bed, take in his arms, hold close against his chest. He’s against my back, fitted up against me where it’s easy. He strokes his big hand over my arm, splays his fingers over my ribs, feels the place where my heart beats. Maybe he can catch them, the piece of my heart, maybe he can make them hurt less. Maybe he can take some, keep them safe.

I close my eyes, swallow against a thick, terrible lump, try not to think anymore. He’s humming something, I can’t tell if it’s a song or just noise, the vibration reaching through the places where our bodies touch. He kisses my neck, moves to me with glacial slowness, so I can feel his shins, his knees, the heated strength of his thigh, the jut of his hipbone, the flat of his abdomen, the curve of his arm, the angle of his jaw. He’s so slow, slower than usual, lips hot against my skin, softly working to kiss and nuzzle the sensitive flesh.

He’s aroused, starting to get that way at least, I can feel his erection strain against the soft cotton of his boxer shorts, the stiffness settling into the curve of my ass. He rubs at me, strokes me, trying to work heat into the cold, limp way I just lay there and let him do what he wants. It does feel kind of nice, since he’s so gentle, but I just feel slightly numb, cold all the way down even though he’s warmth and heat, sunshine.

He says my task name, says it in a whisper. He tries to roll me toward him, bring our faces together so he can kiss me, and I go along without resistance, let him kiss me, open my mouth when his tongue slides forward. His big hand cups my cheek, pulls me to him and then away, so he can look at me. He says my task name again, despairing, so that it scares me somewhere way down deep.

I start to think, force myself to think, ease myself out of the numb and try to be what he wants. I move slightly, flex my hips to his, bring our lips together so I can kiss him in return. He rolls me on to my side again, presses up against my back, kisses my neck and does all the other warm, gentle things he was doing earlier. This time I respond, get hard for him, try to do this like he wants, be like what he wants. His hand slides beneath the waistband of my underwear, strokes over my cock, so he’s everywhere rubbing at me, touching me.

He slips my shorts below the curve of my ass, slicks and preps me with infinite slow, careful thoroughness. I wish he’d be fast about it, hurry up and get this over with. I wish he would be rough, hurt me, give me something to think about. It’s so dangerous, this breaking point within me, this dark desire, and it has to mean something that I came here, looking for him, rather than go in search of the first set of hard, cruel eyes to find me.

He pushes into me, so slow it makes me shudder. He stays there, letting me adjust to the pressure, the sensation of being filled and stretched. I turn my face into the pillow when he starts to move. He’s so slow, so gentle, pressed close up against me and kissing my neck and shoulder, rubbing his big, warm hands over my cold, skinny body. There’s a tightness in my chest, something slowly building, the gentler and slower he is with me.

“Deimos,” he says, lips against my ear. Whispering affection with the sounds of the name, like my ass is worth a damn to him, like I’m not some slut who ended up outside his door enough times he finally let me in.

I breathe quick, shallow, little gasps because my chest is so tight it hurts, so tight I can’t stand it. He kisses my neck, my shoulder, lips full and tender, so fucking gentle. He’s rolling his hips, barely anything, just cuddling me with it, so if weren’t for the fact he’s hilted in my ass it wouldn’t be sex at all. It isn’t fucking, what he’s doing, and I can’t stand it.

I don’t want to think, I pretty much promised him I wouldn’t, but he’s pressed up against my back and moving into me and it’s too much like my dream last night, my dream of a skinny pup in a skinny top bunk, two goddamn recruits curled close. And the skinny pup, this desperate to look tough colony trash, this junkyard dog, he’s pressed up against me and moving into me, so fucking gentle, but he’s calling me all the wrong names, saying all the wrong things, and I’m crying because everything hurts even though he’s being gentle.

I don’t want to think about how I woke confused, panicked, lashing out because my limbs were my own again. I kept trying to fight in the dream but couldn’t, not until I woke up and hurt the fighter who says he loves me, who doesn’t deserve to get hurt by me. Woke up so scared and confused, sick all over with guilt, with shame, watching him clean his bloody face in the sink because I’m the one who hurt him.

And I don’t want to think, I can’t think about it, what happened in medical, like my dream was some terrible premonition. My chest is tight, I’m getting dizzy with the slow, gentle way he’s pressed against me, the shallow rhythm of his hips. I’m trying so hard not to think of anything but there’s everything, such a deafening clamor between my ears. He’s being so gentle, he’s trying to be nice, holding his lips against my neck, humming sweetly.

He isn’t fucking me, he isn’t having sex with me. He’s trying to love me, make love to me, show me all the things he tells me in way he think I’ll understand. And I can’t stand it, I can’t handle this, each steady thrust a separate kind of pain. My breath is just little gasps, rapid and shallow, shuddering in and out of the claustrophobic feeling in my chest.  I keep my face turned into the pillow, hope he won’t notice I’ve finally started to cry, and I wait for it to be over, I wait for the nightmare to end.

It works, for a little while at least, because I manage to be quiet. He keeps moving into me, the slow way of it unrelenting, like he could do this for hours when I just want him to stop. He leans into me, kisses behind my ear, whispers, “I love you so much.”

So I can’t be quiet about it anymore, there’s just no way. I sob, hitched and broken enough that maybe he doesn’t realize what’s happening at first. I sob again, harder, so he definitely notices, stops, tenses, his hands gripping me tight.

“Deimos?” So much panic in the way he says it, the way he tries to turn me to him. I jerk my shoulder out of his hand, keep my face stubbornly buried in the pillow, cry harder because I can’t ever seem to fucking stop anymore. I hate it, I hate myself, hate everything so intensely that some terrible pitched noise comes from my throat because I can’t scream, my chest is too tight.

He slips out of me, frantic enough he forgets to be slow about it, so it almost stings. He keeps trying to pull me out of the pillow, get my face up so he can see me. I fight him on it, even though it’s useless, and I can’t stop making all these stupid wet noises, these choking, desperate sobs.

“What’s wrong?” His voice is tight with fear. His hands flutter over my shoulders, run through my hair. “Deimos, are you hurt? Did I hurt you?”

He folds himself over my back, trying to hug me even though the angle’s all wrong for it, and I can feel his hands shaking as they move over my arms, circle my waist. His lips fall on my neck, flurrying rapid, anxious kisses over me. “Deimos, baby, please stop crying, please tell me what’s wrong.”

I just cry harder, because he’s being so gentle, so nice, and I’m torn up inside and been holding it all in for so long. It’s a loud enough sob that it sort of ends the rest of it, sends me into shivering, quiet gasps again. He feels at me, tentative, terrified, rubbing my back and waist, my hips and thighs, between my legs and behind, searching for where I’ve gotten hurt, anywhere bleeding or tender.

“Oh, Deimos, baby…” He pets my hair, a bit calmer now, maybe realizing I’m not hurt anywhere that shows, that he hasn’t ripped me. “I shouldn’t have – I just wanted to –“ He kisses my neck, shoulders, back, desperate with the wavering way he’s apologizing.

He can’t reach my face, I’m stubbornly trying to hide from him, so he’s just kissing everywhere else he can reach. “I just wanted to give you something nice, I’m so sorry. You should have said some—“ The silence fits in abruptly, stopping him mid sentence, making him audibly flinch. “Oh, no, Deimos, honey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And I can’t tell him the real reason I’m so upset, I can’t tell him what happened in medical. I can’t tell him how a weak, wounded fighter in a skinny hospital bed whispered at me, hushed at me, his voice the raspy one for once, so I had to lean close just to hear him tell me he loved me, to have him kiss me, to have him break my heart. 


	10. Part Two, Chapter Two

_The navigator’s left because he has to, gone to meet with the rest of the cream-colored flock, leaving me alone in medical beside a wounded fighter, his dusty skin swathed in white bandaging, looking small and fragile in a skinny hospital bed with so many tubes and machines. I’m just standing there watching him sleep, because even though he was awake earlier he’s still tired, made weak by his injuries, so I don’t begrudge him sleeping now even though I’ve finally managed the time to come see him._

_It isn’t long before his dark lashes stir, eyes rolling beneath the closed lids, and I see his mouth worry and bend as he hovers somewhere just shy of waking. I lean over the bed, wanting to be close if his eyes do open, heart racing something terrible, some wild creature beating against its cage. I’m sick with guilt, feeling wretchedly ashamed, the same stomach-knotted anxiety I’ve felt ever since the smoke-filled hanger bay sent my whole world into chaos. He’s been my whole world for so long, this skinny pup in a skinny hospital bed, but all this guilt and shame pours from my heart like smoke, because it burned to a charred, husked ruin in the flames of the Reliant._

_And then his dark eyes glimmer open, shift slightly like he doesn’t know where he is, like nothing’s making sense. I grip the short plastic rail of the bed and get closer and lean further so he’ll be able to see me. His eyes are glazed, hazy, drugged over and out of focus, passing over me so that I wonder if he sees me at all. The press of his lips flexes, his brow wavers into a sloped line._

_“Hey,” he says, or tries. It’s such a small whisper, raspy in a way that hurts._

_I lean closer._

_His hand twitches against the sheet, fingers scratching at the threads. “Hey,” he says again, demanding, trying to sound tough. I figure out what he wants and force my white-knuckled grip off the rail. I set my hand close to his, not touching him in case I’m wrong, but he grabs for it, tries to hold it with a squeeze, but there’s no strength to it._

_“There you are,” he says. Seems content about it, relieved, eyes closed, eyebrows sagging out of their frown. “Looking for you. Couldn’t find you.”_

_I squeeze his hand in return, to let him know I’m here, I’m right here, his little grey mouse is at his side so he doesn’t have to worry, doesn’t have to feel anxious. I’ll watch over him, I’ll watch his back just like when we were recruits, I’ll use the knife he gave me all that time ago to keep him safe. I’ll be here for him until he’s strong again._

_“Hey,” he says again. Almost too weak to keep holding my hand now, fingers going slack. The whisper drops to nothing, just enough that I know there’s words in it. I lean so much closer, so careful to avoid the tubes and bandages. I have to put my face almost right against his before the whispering becomes clear._

_“Couldn’t go without you,” he says. “Fucking – helpless.” There’s something of a laugh in it, a trembling roll of air, so soft it’s hardly anything._

_I think maybe that’s the last of it, that he’s drifted away again, so I start to lean back, start to pull my hand away, but his hand abruptly tightens, becomes almost strong. “Hey,” he says. Anxious, alarmed, eyes fluttering open again to stare out with frantic confusion. They shift around the room, waver over me without focus and then slide shut._

_I get close again, heart thudded painfully against my ribs. I dare to reach out with my free hand, stroke the little tuft of his hair that’s sticking up against the pillow in a hopeless kind of way. He seems so helpless like this, it almost makes me angry, like I could rip the machines apart in a fury if I thought it would free him from their coddling weakness._

_The corners of his mouth move, almost pulling back, almost becoming a smile. He moves his head slightly, brings our faces close. Whispers, “Fucking love you. Know that? Not repeating it.”_

_Everything stops, my lungs, my heart, the machines, the battleship, the war, the rotation of the Earth, the fucking fusion of the Sun’s core. Everything just stops because it’s that moment, something so unbelievable, a dream and the beginning of a nightmare even if I don’t know it. The knots in my stomach snap, ruptured from being pulled in too many directions, the frayed ends something beautiful and terrible because the moment is beautiful and terrible, my entire perfect hopes and worst fears made real._

_And then he lifts his head from the pillow, just that last little inch needed, but he’s so weak that it has to be a struggle, it has to be like running a dozen laps, a hundred, some miracle of physical strength for him to kiss me. Almost chaste, sweet, so tender. He sinks back into the pillow, mouth pulling into a definite smirk. “Gonna get well soon, princess. Don’t cry anymore.”_

_His navigator. His cream-colored navigator with pretty wet eyes. He’s in pain, they’ve drugged him, he’s so weak and confused, he doesn’t see me or can’t see me or doesn’t even know who I am so he thinks I’m his navigator, he’s calling me the same stupid endearment, running a hand through my hair and fucking me in a cramped utility closet even though he’s just some skinny pup in a skinny hospital bed, hand limp in mine because he’s asleep._

\----

I recorded [audio](https://soundcloud.com/violetnyte/phoenix-part-two-chapter-two) of this chapter


	11. Part Two, Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Athos = Porthos' fighter. (Sorry for possible confusion, I joined the fandom late and didn't know about Phobos' fanon name)

It’s a horrible sound, shattered, fractured, sharp enough to cut, something I don’t want to be my fault but it is. I’ve woken the fighter with it, who brushes the tears from my cheeks, pets my hair and asks if I’m awake. I manage to stop the wracking sobs at least, since I woke myself with it as well, and I’ve got to stop this before I drain out entirely.

“Deimos, shh. Hey. It’s okay.” He sets his forehead close to mine before I flinch from him, twist into the pillow to hide my face. I don’t want him to see me like this, I don’t want to be like this anymore. It’s bad enough I fell asleep crying, I don’t need to wake up that way as well. It’s so unfair, I hate it so much, and I cry more from a dull sense of fury than anything else.

His hand rests on my back, rubs at the shaking line of my shoulder until I stop entirely, shivering with the effort of holding it all in. He leans forward, kisses the back of my hair. I can feel his helplessness in every gentle touch, in every hesitant way he tries to comfort me without asking what’s wrong. I didn’t give him any explanation, just cried and cried thinking about what happened in medical until I fell asleep, dreamed about what happened in medical, woke up crying.

Like washing my hair, lather, rise, repeat, trying to wash the pain from my heart.

The top bunk creaks until a soft, piping little voice asks, “Praxis?” There’s such apprehension in the way he says the fighter’s task name, like maybe he’d rather pretend to be asleep than find out what’s wrong.

He’s gentle about it, speaking quietly, soothing. “It’s fine, Ethos. Go back to bed.”

I keep my shoulders hunched, defending myself from their combined concern. I wish the fighter would shake me, demand to know why I’m being so pathetic like this, yell at me about wanting something I can’t have rather than just accept what he’s try to give. Everything’s such a mess, and it hurts, and I don’t want to think about it, I so desperately don’t want to think about it.

I pull myself upright. It startles the fighter, makes him take his hands away and give me as much space as possible given how narrow the bunk is. I keep my head down, my face turned, not looking at him because I know he’s worried, I know he wants answers. He wants to fix this, fix me, thinking that if he just gathers up enough pieces he can assemble something whole out of the many ways in which I’m broken.

The room’s dark, the shadows looming in ways that try to trick me, but it’s a cramped space, identical to the rest of the dorms in the Sleipnir. I’m able to find the dresser just fine, figure out which jacket’s mine by the luring heat of the knives, figure out the pants by feeling at the sizes.

The navigator whispers again, “Praxis? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Rather than shut him down about it, the fighter says, “I don’t know.” He’s coming after me, throwing the words to the top bunk like a parting shot, sounding so helpless with it. He’s not so graceful in the dark, somehow manages to stumble over his own boots, muttering soft curses.

His hand closes over my arm, stopping me from shucking my belt through the loops. “Deimos?”

I shake free of him, drop to the floor and start feeling for my boots. They’re not beside the dresser. They must be over by the bed, next to his, but he stops me again with a hand on my elbow.

“Where are you going? It’s the middle of the night,” he says.

Like maybe I don’t know that, or maybe he thinks I’m still half-asleep. I shrug, try to pull arm free with the same gesture, but he’s not letting go this time. He gets closer, sets his hand against the back of my neck like he wants to hold me against his chest. I tense, resisting him, because every gentle touch hurts so deep. There’s all this deep shame and sickening guilt in me, the queasiness heightened by the tipsy-drunk feeling of having cried so hard, so much, for so long. I can’t handle him being nice to me like this when I don’t deserve it, when I keep thinking of my mad dog, the skinny pup in a hospital bed, my Sacha who I know he hates, who he can’t stand to have on my mind.

“Deimos, it was just a bad dream. You’re okay.”

I wish what happened in medical had been just some nightmare, something to torment me as an idea rather than a reality, and I’m so far from okay that I could cry again. I laugh instead, my ugly, choking, breathless laugh that I hate. It threatens to become a sob anyway, so I clap a hand over my mouth and scrunch my eyes shut, wincing, trying to focus myself quiet.

He coaxes at me, tries to take my jacket off, and I fight him at it, roll my shoulders and take a step back. I need to leave, right now, before he says anything nice, before his gentle hands get ahold of me and draw more ache from the deepest parts of me, places I didn’t even know could hurt. He persists, trying to tell me it’s okay when it isn’t, until I have to actually slap his hands away.

He’s backed me all the way into the wall by the door. I wouldn’t have let him do that normally, so it’s just as alarming as the rest of it. “Deimos,” he says, slow and patient. “Come back to bed, okay?”

I shake my head, slow at first, and then frantic with it, pushing at his hands when he tries to get a hold of me. I need him to leave me alone, to stop being so nice, because all this guilt and terror inside me going to boil over and hurt him.

It gives him pause, makes him back away. “Okay,” he says at last. “Wait for me. I’ll go with you.”

Which is stupid, since he’s the whole reason I’m leaving. Soon as he’s gone far enough away that he can’t stop me, I’m out the door and in the hall. I walk fast, hoping to make it to the lift before he can catch up with me.

It doesn’t work. He’s faster, long-legged thanks to his height. He’s got the patch on, his jacket under one arm, boots in the other, coming after me in his socks. Just his pants on over his nightclothes, and those unfastened at that, just shucked on as fast as possible to catch me. He doesn’t say anything once we’re in the lift, just closes up his pants, puts on his boots, shrugs into his jacket. I keep my eyes on the floor, where it’s safe, where I don’t have to see the way he’s watching me.

There are still fighters down in the base. Smoking, playing cards, carousing, drinking. I want to find one with cruel eyes that linger just a moment too long, become some little mouse to get tossed around, but I can’t with the lion prowling at my side, all bluster with his tough scowl, like he’s my bodyguard, like he’s here to keep me safe from bad decisions.

It takes a bit of searching, so that I think maybe he it won’t happen, but then it does, I find the fighter I’m looking for at one of the card games, kicked back in his chair and smoking, just watching because the stakes have gotten too high or aren’t high enough yet. He sees me coming, lifts an eyebrow since it’s been a while, and the lion at my side tries to grab my arm, pull me back with a hushed insistence.

I shake him free, add a glare for good measure, because I didn’t want him to come here in the first place.

“Deimos, wait.” He’s unashamedly begging, putting a hand on me again but in a way that’s gentle, almost caressing, dangerously intimate considering we’re not alone.

I pull my brows together until he gets the message, let’s me go, watches me go with concern bracketing his mouth. And he follows, too, doesn’t get the fucking message after all, tags along after me like I want him there.

He’s lanky, broad across the shoulders, chin pointed and mouth wide, like some sly little fox. He’s always good for a bottle, or at least enough of one to matter, and I approach with my shoulders square, head held high, meeting his gaze evenly so he knows I’m serious despite the stupid lion at my side. He lowers the legs of his chair, stands so he can tower over me, because all the fighters are taller than me and most of the navigators as well.

“Deimos,” whispers the fighter at my side. There’s a panicked, breathless quality to his voice. “Please, baby, don’t do this. Let’s go back to bed.”

I snap a glare at him, all the knots in my stomach twisting tighter, so much guilt that it’s nauseating, but there’s a hard steel core of resolve at the center of it all. He shouldn’t have come here, I didn’t want him to come here, and there’s a certain edge of madness to it all because so much of me wants to let him grab my hand and drag me away from the edge, and the rest of me just wants to jump.

He can’t whisper anything else, because we’ve gotten close enough now. I go right up to the fox-grinned fighter, let him look me over. I hope my face isn’t puffed up and ugly from crying. I look casual about it, because we both know why I’m here and what I want, what he wants in return. I want to get so drunk I don’t have to think about what happened in medical, and I’m good enough on my knees for him to give me one of the near-full bottles on the card table.  

He looks at the bottles, picks up one that’s less full than I deserve, but I’m not going to haggle him for it and he knows it. I just nod, let him know that’s fine, so he tells the other players at the poker game to play without him. He jerks his head at me, wanting me to follow him, which I will gladly, since I’d rather not suck his dick in front of an audience.

“You here to play, Praxis?” The dealer’s looking at us with interest, maybe thinking that just because of the eye patch he’ll be worthless at cards, maybe wondering what the fuck he’s doing here since it isn’t his scene, he’s all hushed up refinement like some navigator.

“No,” he says. And sounds calm about it, less snappish than I would have thought, but I can hear the underlying tension.  I start to move forward, but the lion grabs my arm, keeps me in place with bruising force. He turns the lopsided dark gaze on the fox’s sly grin, looks at me, looks back at the other fighter.

His hand tightens, so it’s really starting to hurt me. Says, “Tell you what, Athos. I’ll fight you for it instead.”

“You’ll what?” Eyebrows up, mouth parted, surprised and amused at the same time, drunk enough to think it’s a funny idea.

He’s only got the one eye to put on us both, and it’s almost dizzying for a moment to see the speed at which he looks between us, taking in the bottle, the way I’m glaring at him, the cock-sure fox-like grin on the other fighter’s face. “We can arm wrestle for it,” he says. And smiles, easy-going, like maybe he’s drunk, too, like maybe this is a jovial great fucking time everyone’s having.

“What?”

He shrugs, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t matter to him one way or another. “Shit tastes like turpentine. What else do you want?” His voice hardens, making it almost a threat, still not letting go of my arm so the message is clear, controlling, possessive.

I’m the center of fucking attention now, the way they’re both looking at me. Something sways in the balance, and the decision’s made. The card players gather up their game, move it out of the way, so the two fighters can get situated for the _fight_. Which is more than just arm wrestling, as any fucking idiot can tell, but that doesn’t stop them from sitting down, elbows against the table, hands up, palms clasped, the lion snarling without sound, the fox just grinning.

The card players make swift bets, most of them going against the fox so the odds are hardly right. The bottle goes into the middle, a reminder of the stakes. I’m off the side watching, and I’m the real prize. Someone has to count them down so they can start flexing, straining, struggling to be stronger in a way that doesn’t really matter.

It doesn’t take long, because he’s so strong even though he’s always gentle, but he doesn’t have any reason to be gentle now. It’s knuckles rapping against the table, men jeering and laughing, and then both the chairs skidding back as the fight becomes momentarily real just like everyone knew it would. I watch, heart in throat, as the fox cheats, pulls a knife, rips a long gash that I’m hoping is mostly fabric and not skin, and gets smarted knocked down by a well-placed clock across the jaw.

It’s over just as fast as it started, the fighter with the eye patch using his lopsided-glare to keep everyone in place. He takes the bottle, sweeps the tangled scowl over them again, including me in it this time.

I know better than to stick around. I stumble after him, weak-kneed with a queasy sort of denial, a churning sense of horror, hands shaking from the slackened rush of adrenaline. He takes my arm at the elbow, pulls me along even though I’m unresisting, herding and hustling me out of the base and back into the lift.

When we’re alone, I think to check the rip in his jacket sleeve. He jerks his arm away, brow still tight, glaring at me for a moment before going lax, letting me see the bloodless gash. All fabric, no skin, he’s fine, and it’s just a dull sense of relief. He’s so angry with me, I can tell, it’s obvious he’s angry with me, but he doesn’t say anything. He hands me the bottle, which is almost worse than if he just yelled at me.

The lift is rising through the decks of the Sleipnir because he’s punched in his dorm level, but I quickly put in for my own, one level up. He looks over at me, deep lines bracketing the corners of his mouth. I clutch the bottle to my chest and say nothing, look at the floor, shoulders hunched like I think he might start smacking me around even though I’m pretty sure he won’t.

When the lift opens, he doesn’t get out. He stands there until the doors close again, waiting until I get out at my own level. Following me, keeping tabs on me, since I just proved to him what a fucking slut I still am after all his kindness, all his gentle pleas, all the ways he’s begged me to be with him and only him. I’ve hurt him, just like I knew I would, and it’s such a timid fear that makes me trudge toward my room without looking at him.

My navigator’s in the lower bunk, softly snoring, hand curled off the bed and toward the floor. I stop at the sight of him, almost reconsider, but then I realize it’s better this way, the fighter can’t keep following me now, can’t yell at me. But he’s the one who pushes me forward, bullies me into the room, so that I kick off my boots, crawl up into the top bunk, wait with trepidation.

He sits on the end, near the ladder, cross-legged and staring at me in the darkness. I sit on the other end, legs folded beneath me, bottle against my knees and watching him in return. The tension is some palpable thing between us, a hulking creature of fear looming in the shadows, but he doesn’t say a word. I can just hear the ragged quality of his breathing, the terse edge that tells me he’s upset, angry.

I wrench the cap from the bottle. Might as well, since it was so much trouble, maybe more trouble than it’s worth, but it’s one less thing to think about, one more reason. Close my eyes against the sting of it, the metallic, stale, churned up disgusting taste of it. My throat flexes, swells, gulping as I drink fast, drink hard, lower the bottle and focus on the rushing warmth of it, the heavy way it settles into my stomach and out into my limbs.

He sits there watching me, not saying a word. I drink quickly, fast enough that it goes straight to my head and does exactly what I want. It’s that numb-lip, warm-chest, flushed-face sort of dizzy, exceedingly drunk so that the slightest motions become exaggerated. I wish he would say something, even if just to yell at me. I’m not so drunk that I can’t feel all that guilt and shame, all the terror and sorrow, the bone-deep fear that he’s going to start yelling, that he thinks he’s seen me at my worse and I haven’t even told him about what happened in medical.

I don’t want to think about it so desperately, so fucking desperately, so I drink more. I’ll drink until my fingers go numb, until the wounded, slashed apart, terrible weight of my heart goes away, until it all stops. I close my eyes as the room begins to spin, and it’s just like being in the ship, hearing my navigator cursing, seeing the red lights flash, thinking I’m going to die and wishing I could tell someone I love him just one last time.

Eventually it works, the pain recedes, everything becomes unreal. Nothing to think about, nothing in me to hurt, just cold, just numb, just oblivion. I get my eyes open. There’s still liquid in the bottle, still enough for tomorrow night, so I won’t have any dreams, won’t have to think. I carefully try to put cap back on the bottle, but it’s tricky. The bottle keeps moving. It’s like it’s underwater, wet and wavering.

Weight shifts against the mattress. A hand closes over mine, soft and gentle. The cap goes back on the bottle, the bottle goes away. Someone strokes at my hair, pulling the strands away from my downturned face. Everything’s heavy now, spinning away from me. My breath hitches, caught around something. 

“Oh, Deimos,” he says quietly. So soft and gentle when I expect him to be hard and loud. His lips press into my cheek, linger. I don’t remember when he got his arms around me, when he pulled me into his lap, when I started crying again. His whisper is louder than my messy drunk weeping.“You have to tell me what’s hurting you. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

“Ssnnt,” I say. It’s nothing really anything, choked with tears, clogged with the thick, uncoordinated quality of my tongue.

“Is it because of Sacha?” he asks, quiet, soft, gentle so it still hurts.

Doesn’t hurt as much as it could, I’ve gotten too drunk to care, to feel it all the way deep down. It’s just a shallow ache, a flaring twinge of agony as I move my head up and down in an exaggerated, careful nod. I turn into him, knock my arms against him until I remember how elbows work and get them slung over his shoulders.  I just drape over him, dizzy and numb, breath hot and chest tight, empty-headed in a way that’s nice.

It makes him sigh, tighten his hold over me, kiss the side of my head. “You know I love you, right?”

I nod again, all the guilt and shame making a resurgence in a way that makes me feel physically sick. Revulsion courses through me with a hard shudder, and I swallow a mouthful of fear-tinged saliva. For a moment I think I might puke all over his back and my bed, the urge making me feel clammy, shivery and strange. I somehow keep everything down, manage to quell the sick churning.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he says. Except I’m in a bed, my bed, so I’m not sure what he means. I twist, looking for my pillow, start to fall away from him in such an uncoordinated motion that he grabs for me, pulls on my arms, hauls me into his chest again. He just holds me there for a moment, and I can hear the race-quick beat of his heart.

The heartbeat slows to normal, steady and reassuring, something nice against my ear. He scoots back toward the ladder, dragging me along with him, whispering at me to put my hands and feet somewhere specific. I don’t know why he’s taking me from my bed to put me into my bed. I don’t understand how the ladder works anymore, I’ve forgotten what I’m doing, so the last few feet are a tumbling fall until he catches me, holds me until I can stand.

“Dammit, Ethos,” he says. It makes me wonder what my task name is again, even though I’ve had it for a while, until I realize he’s not talking to me, just muttering under his breath.

My navigator’s still snoring softly, still got one hand trailing toward the ground, just exactly as we found him in the first place, with the little glow of his tablet screen coming from beside him on the bed because he always sleeps with it left on. I wonder if his arm will fall asleep like that, wonder if I ought to shove it back onto the bunk, but I’m getting dragged out the door so it doesn’t matter.

The lights in the hall seem inappropriately bright even though they’re dimmed for the night, even though it isn’t night but just the block of hours forced into being called the night. I like these kinds of thoughts because they don’t hurt.

There’s something stuffy in my nose that I’m trying to either suck in or blow out, and it’s awful either way. The fighter hears me, stops, rummages through his pockets. He keeps one arm around me, so I’m pulled against his side, half-walking, half-getting carried. There’s nothing in his pocket, so he just offers me the hem of his tank top instead. I don’t realize what he’s set over my nose until I’ve already committed to getting rid of the stuffiness. He pinches my nose, drags the fabric around until I’m clean and he’s not.

I hear him sigh, pull me along again. I stumble over nothing, just a random spot in the flawlessly flat floor. “Ssst!”

“Careful,” he says. He catches me, but the stumbling gets worse before we reach the lift.

Everything’s spinning like wildness, an endless streak of stars. It gets worse, everything tilted now and still whirling around much too fast. He’s picked me up, starting carrying me. I’ve got my head against his shoulder, over it, arm draped over his back just like my navigator’s arm draped over the edge of the bunk. He’s carried me like this before, each time equally bleary.

“I s’nng  wald,” I tell him. My whispering rasp, gone even worse from the searing quality of the contraband and the fact I’m horrendously, wonderfully drunk.

He shifts me into a more secure hold. “I can’t leave Ethos in the room alone,” he says. “And I’m not leaving you like this, either.” It’s worded like an apology, like I care what he wants to do with me. He could be carrying me toward airlock, to cast me out into the spinny, brilliant stars, or straight into the ship’s engines, to batter and bludgeon me beyond recognition. I deliciously don’t care what he does with me.

“Sssserr,” I say. Try to make it clearer, sort out the tangles, struggle to get the right kind of movements with my lips. “Sorry.”

He takes in a breath and lets it out slow. “Yeah.”

That’s all he says for a while, so I don’t try to apologize again, forget what I’m apologizing for, lose track of everything so I’m nothing. There’s a sense of swaying, of floating, the strange rhythm of being carried. All the lights are on in the room, so it’s brighter than the hall.

“Oh,” says a soft little voice. “You’re back.” And then, quicker, like he’s just noticing, “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” he says. Flat like, so it’s not very believable. “Do you mind if I get the lights?”

I try to lift my head, try to open my eyes and place everything. My eyes are open, that’s why it’s so bright, but nothing wants to stay focused.

“Oh, no, um. Of course.  Sorry, I just—“

“Didn’t know if I was coming back. Yeah. I know.” And he sighs again, sounding weary and drained, like maybe he ought to be the one getting carried like this.

“Oh. You… you noticed?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. He leans, lowers, stretches somewhat he can lay me into the bed. I tumble into the mattress like a sack of flower, limp and pliable for him. His hand lingers over my cheek before vanishing. My eyes are closed again, and I open them just in time for the room to plunge into darkness.

“Praxis?”

“What?” He’s back over to me again, tugging at my boots.

“I just wanted to say. That, oh.” The top bunk creaks, and then the little voice is closer, softer. “Praxis? You’re nothing like my old fighter. I’ll try – I’ll remember that, from now on. Okay?”

His forehead touches mine, just resting, like he’s so tired that the act of getting my jacket separated from my wilted shoulders is a greater effort than he’s capable of doing. “Right now isn’t a good time for this, Ethos.” He is so quiet about it, so gentle, but the words are tight, bitter, because I guess he’s still angry about something. There’s a writhing unease between my ribs that tells me it’s my fault, that he’s furious with me right now, but I’ve managed to get into a place where I’m safe, where his anger can’t reach me.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I know. Um, need me to do anything?”

“No, just go to sleep. It’s fine.”

He’s gotten me undressed, flipped and flopped my dead-limbed body around enough times to pry my clothes free. His warmth settles in beside me, pulls me to him. His mouth falls against my slack lips, my cold cheeks, goes into my neck and stays there, pressed against my skin, breath hot and uneven. I hear him sigh, the outrush of air so shaky and unsure, like he’s the one with something deep inside that hurts. His arms tighten over me, like he can pull me out of my slow orbital drift. He sighs again, the air trembling over my neck, and sighs more until I realize his little sighs are sobs. 


	12. Part Two, Chapter Four

I’ve had hangovers, and this isn’t a fucking hangover. It’s dying, slowly and steadily, miserable and wretched. Everything from last night is there, a thousand times worse, all my heartbreak and guilt, the shame of it all, so I’m such a mess that it’s just terrible. I think maybe it’ll be okay at first, when I wake up in the fighter’s arms and he’s still asleep, looking almost peaceful. It’s a strange, claustrophobic kind of feeling, head pounding, stomach churning, blearily confused and dry-mouthed, mind blank until it isn’t anymore, until I remember everything, more or less, right up until the black-out oblivion of drinking on my top bunk. Somehow I’m back in his bottom bunk, in an entirely different room, on an entirely different level of the Sleipnir.

Then it’s trying to get out without waking him, not really succeeding, maybe still drunk with the clumsiness, the staggering. He steers me into the bathroom, asks questions I can’t understand, gets me kneeling where I need to be, pets my hair and pulls at my bangs while I retch.

I’m so weak afterward, shivering, clammy-skinned, feeling flushed and frozen at the same time, breath rasping, arms draped over the toilet seat and forehead pressed into them. He drapes a warm washcloth over the back of my neck, rubs circles into my spine, doesn’t say anything. After a while of this, when I’ve moved from deep shaking shudders to small, shivering trembles, he makes me drink a glass of water, which stays down for a few minutes before coming right back up again.

I gasp with the struggle to exist, because this isn’t a hangover, it’s dying, slow and miserable.

“Here,” he says. He’s got another fucking glass of water.

I hunch my shoulders, cringing away from the coddling efforts.

“Deimos.” Sharp with it, still angry at me because he has all the reasons in the world to be. And then, inexplicably, soft again, gentle. “You need to drink water. Just a few sips to start, okay?”

I scrunch my eyes shut. His anger is easier to handle than the kindness, and the guilt and shame are just overwhelming, making me dizzy and sick so that I gag, heave, try to vomit but there’s nothing left.

He bullies me into it, making me sit on the floor with my head against my knees, drinking slow so it stays down this time. The whole time he sits close, pets and rubs at me with concern, gentle and kind, and I don’t know why. I’m so ashamed of myself, the hangover sobering enough so that I feel deep regret for last night. I wish he would start yelling at me already. I can’t handle anymore of his gentle strength.

I get hazy, exhausted and drained, not quite falling asleep again but close to it all the same. I’ve drained myself out enough that there’s just emptiness left, a void that’s still vivid and painful. It’s a worse rasp than usual, rubbed raw with bile, truly horrible and ugly. “Sorry.”

I hear him let out a long breath. “Yeah.”

I don’t know what that means, if he’s forgiving me, agreeing with me, or just letting me know that he heard me. I try again, voice even smaller, trying not to sound like I’m pleading when I am, when I’m just this little broken thing trying to hold this together, trying to salvage what I’ve clearly ruined. “Praxis? Sorry.”

It’s the intake of his breath this time, short and jagged. “Yeah,” he says again. “I heard you.”

Which answers my question at least. I fumble at hand at the back of my neck to find the washcloth still there. I peel the fabric from my skin and brush it over my face instead, scrubbing with shaking hands.

“You ready to tell me what last night was about?” He’s terse with it, jaw clenched, anger seething below the calm, gentle surface.

I wince my eyes shut for a moment before daring to look over at him. He’s staring back at me, brows tight, one socket whole and the other scarred, so the pain in his eye matches its missing twin, the twisted hollow ruin. I drop my gaze quickly, swallow a resurgence of nausea. I just barely hunch and lower one shoulder.

He takes the empty water glass, refills it. Rather than give it to me, he stands there, looking at me, silent and terrible. “Here,” he says. He offers me a hand. “Get up. Ethos will need to get ready.”

I nod slightly, put my little hand in his big one, let him haul me to my feet. It’s a tense moment where everything spins, tumbles sideways, so I sway into his chest and have to cling there, shaky-kneed and queasy all over again. My head pounds harder so that my breathing turns shallow, my heart races, sickly cold sweat pours over my body.

He waits until I’m steady, gentle even with his anger. He puts an arm around me, keeps me safe like always so I can’t fall, even when I’m trying to jump. He guides me out of the bathroom, back over to his bunk, which I slowly sink into, droop sideways, and lie there shivery and sweating from the slight, exhausting effort of crossing the room.

He sits next to me, prods me against the pillows and the wall so I’m almost upright, forces the fucking glass of water at me. The top bunk creaks, the little navigator finally braving the trip down. He seems ready to say something, but the fighter catches his eye, shakes his head, warns him away.

The navigator bites his lip, buries a hand in his sleep-tousled curls but doesn’t argue. He gathers up a change of clothes and disappears into the bathroom. After a moment the shower turns on, and the rush of water prompts the fighter to start prying.

He says, “Deimos. Tell me what happened with Cain yesterday.”

I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to think about it.

“You know I can’t understand unless you tell me.”

I don’t want him to understand.

“Hey.” And he’s rough about it, shaking my shoulder like he thinks I’ve fallen asleep. I can hear his breath shorten, the frustration in it, but he’s gone back to being gentle he leans over me, rests his head on to my shoulder for a moment. “Deimos, please, I know you don’t like to talk, but you have to talk to me sometimes, and this is one of those times. I can’t do this otherwise.”

I can’t do this either, so we’re even.

When I still don’t say anything, don’t even shrug at him, he sets a hand against the side of my face, rubs his fingers into my scalp, his thumb digging at my temple so it’s soothing, so he’s working the pounding into something less terrible. “Baby, I love you, you know I do, please tell me you understand that. I’m mad about last night, but just because I get upset with you – Deimos, please, just look at me for a second. This is really important. Open your eyes and look at me.”

I’ve got my teeth clenched together against something shattered. I take short little puffs of air, my chest tight. I’m going to be sick again, sick with guilt, so full of self-loathing it’s just all I am, everything of me hurting, everything of me terrible. He knows I’m not asleep, he knows I’m doing this on purpose, that I’m trying to block him out in a passive way because I’m too weak to get away, he’s got me pinned without even trying.

“Deimos, please. I know you don’t feel well. If I could wait, I would, but after – baby, you scared me so bad last night. Do you understand that? Do you know much it hurts me to see you get hurt? “ His voice is tight, thick, restrained. He digs his fingers into my scalp harder, so it feels wonderful, him forcing away the headache like this, touching me in a way that’s strong but gentle. “Please, Deimos. I need you to be with me for this.”

“Aleks,” I say. Rasp it at him, just my ugly whisper made even uglier.

It surprises him. I can feel it in the way his hand skips, stutters, before the motion smooths out so he can rub at my head more, ease the headache. “Who is Aleks?” he asks, slow and patient, wary.

I pull my mouth into a frown, open my eyes at last. He’s so anxious, fraught with tension, his one eye so round and soft, making me feel warm and fluttery, redoubling all my shame. The lines around his mouth sag when I look at him, something that makes me feel horrible leaping into the worried tightness of his expression.

“Me,” I say. Swallow, blink slow and long so I can close my eyes for just a moment without breaking him. Although it makes me feel panicky, makes me terrified, I look at him.

It takes a minute to sink in, eye widening, shoulders straightening. “Your name is Aleks?”

I nod against his hand.

“Aleks,” he says. Tentatively, like he’s testing the syllables, seeing how they fit together, how they sound in his voice. It makes him smile, thin and sad, but a smile anyway. “Aleks.”

“Like Deimos better,” I tell him. Warning him with it. “But Sacha knows. That I’m Aleks. So.” I have to shrug, turn my eyes to the side, unable to look at him any longer. “Wanted to—“

I clench my jaw, draw in a little gasp, chest tight and throat thick, about to start breaking and trying so hard to keep it together because the moment is so fragile. I can’t say it aloud because now I’m afraid my little voice might drift all the way down to medical, might sink deep into nightmarish denial where I think about what happened and pretend it was meant for me and not some wet-eyed navigator.

“Sorry,” I whisper instead. “So sorry.”

“Ah,” he breathes. He leans toward me, slow, waiting to see if I bolt. I turn my face to him instead, so he can kiss my cheek. “It’s okay.” It chokes him, because it’s about lots more than just apologies. Apologies can’t fix this, and we both know it.

His hand trembles against the side of my face, no longer rubbing to soothe the headache but just caressing me, petting at me, fingers so sweet and gentle. The fighter strokes my hair, pulls my bangs aside, look at me carefully, searching. Something snaps, releasing the tight line of his brow. His shoulders slump, his mouth pulls down.

“I’m not mad at you,” he says at last. He’s earnest about it, which is somehow more terrifying than if he were lying. He should be mad at me, for what I did, for how I’m ruining this so thoroughly, hurting him so deeply. He should be furious, yell at me, knock me around so I understand him, rather than this persistent gentle care that I don’t deserve.

“I’m mad about what happened, but I’m not mad at you. Do you understand the difference? Deimos – Aleks—“ I scowl, quickly, making him switch tracks entirely “—Baby, just because something like this happens, I’m not going to stop loving you. That’s not how it works, okay? Please don’t look so scared. I just want to understand what happened last night, what’s hurting you.”

He hesitates, frowning deeply again, tender with concern. His voice is barely anything, hushing at me. “I want to know what has you so scared that you went looking to get pushed around last night. I know what you were trying to do. I just don’t understand… Why you would try to hurt yourself like that. Why you’d try to hurt me.” He breathes slow and deep, visibly collecting himself. He tries to sound firm, still gentle, but strong with conviction, like he can force confidence into me this way. “I just want to understand, okay? I can’t understand unless you tell me.”

I swallow, breathe quick, try not to cry. This is worse than if he just yelled at me, so much worse. I shudder, curl my knees toward my chest, the hangover just making everything a waking nightmare. I swallow again, rapidly, feeling like I might be sick all over again. The shower cuts off, the little navigator probably having stood in there until the water ran cold to give us privacy.

It makes him glance toward the bathroom and then back at me. He’s quiet for a moment, giving me a long, patient look, way better than I deserve. I don’t know why this has to be complicated, why I have to make it complicated. I’m a mess that he needs to wash off his hands, lather, rinse, repeat.

“Later,” he says, quickly, squeezing it into the time we have before the little lamb peeps out of the bathroom to see if the coast is clear. He’s looking hopeful again, like he can make this better. “Will you tell me later?”

I hesitate, like refusing him is an option, before slowly nodding even though I don’t want to. I hope later never happens, just stays some nebulous point in the future, some idle promise we can make to each other, like later things will make sense, like later everything will be all right.

 


	13. Part Two, Chapter Five

I get through breakfast, the briefing, and half of physical training before going down. I want to take it as an accomplishment, considering. It’s on the torturous, staggering run, somewhere after the fourth lap, just a brief realization that it’s going to happen before it does, before my exhausted body puts up a final, absolute protest by dropping.

Things go a bit sideways and stay there, red and black slashes, everything hurting. There’s something of a hazy awareness to it, a familiar voice, familiar hands, other voices that aren’t so soothing, aren’t so tender. Then nothing, not anything that matters, until I wake up in medical and nearly suffocate on the stinging freshness of disinfectant in the air. 

He’s there, lopsided dark gaze distant and unfocused in thought, snapping to attention when he sees I’m awake. I must look as panicked as I feel, with the hostile smell of medical all around me, the too-bright lights, a lot of terrible, frantic nightmares that aren’t dreams but reality. He soothes at me, quickly, setting a hand into my shoulder so I can’t bolt off the bed. “Deimos, it’s okay. You’re okay. You collapsed earlier, remember?”

Which is embarrassing enough without him being here, watching over me, but I remember the last time I woke up in medical, how I wished he had been there. I sag against the bedding and search my eyes over the equipment, the tubing that leads down into the back of my hand. It seems excessive for running myself into the ground at PT.

“It’s just saline. You were dehydrated,” he explains. Anxious sounding, full of worry because of who knows how long he’s been here watching me.

It’s just a fucking hangover, even if it felt like dying this morning. I roll my eyes about it, thinking maybe to amuse him with it, make him share in the joke, but he just looks so serious that it makes me nervous, makes me wonder if there’s somehow more to it than that. I search around at the narrow white bed, the starch-white curtain.

He runs a hand through my bangs, pushing them aside. “You’ll be fine,” he says. “Just rest, okay?” There’s guilt coloring his words, although I have no idea why.

I turn my head toward him, putting cheek into the pillow, and then close my eyes, not wanting to look at the starch bright white of the sheets. He pets my hair, so very gentle, doesn’t say anything, so we can pretend it’s peaceful, that maybe I hadn’t done this to myself by getting blind stupid drunk. I keep my eyes closed, indulging in the niceness of it all, until I remember all the reasons why him being nice hurts.

He doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t press at me to confide in him, just strokes my hair like I’m made of glass, some fragile thing on a tiny fucking pedestal. I can’t understand why he’s so nice to me like this when I don’t deserve it, when the right thing to do would be to yell at me for being a whore, when he ought to beat me so the lesson sticks. It’d be a hell of a lot easier if he did.

He has to leave eventually, since the day’s not over, daring to kiss my forehead first and promising to be back later. Visiting me, I guess, so I can be some wounded fighter in a skinny hospital bed. I stare at the ceiling and try not to think, wonder if I acted tore up if they’d give me the strong pain medicine, stare at the ceiling and wonder if it’s the same bit I’ve seen before, or if all the bright white looks the same.

I’m brought food, which my empty stomach considers rejecting, so I have to eat slow and careful, the mere stupid act exhausting. I’m shivering and sweating afterward, but the food stays down, and it’s less like dying now, less like being so wretched. Someone comes in to check on me, look at the machines, declare that I’m fine now. The clinician and I both get to pretend it’s not a hangover, the whole exchange awkward even though I don’t say a word.

He comes back just as I’m getting ready to leave, leaned against the wall in the hallway scrunching my boots into place with weak, shivery hands. His steps quicken, like I’m going to run off the second I get my bearings, and I’m wary when he closes a hand over my elbow until I realize he’s just helping me keep balanced.

“Feeling better?” he asks.

It’s a dumb question, but he looks so anxious about it, so eager. I just guess he saw me go down, I guess the entire fucking Sleipnir saw me go down, and it probably wasn’t so pretty. I kind of lift a shoulder at him, shrugging, because I’m not ready to start dancing, but I’m not going to fall over again either.

It’s a voice from the opposite end of the corridor, calling in a way that’s surprised and pleased, not expecting to find me here but relieved all the same. “Deimos!”

His head turns, an exaggerated gesture because of the patched over shadow, and I can make a lot of guesses about what’s going on from the way his hand tightens and then releases. I don’t need to look to know it’s the Reliant’s navigator, wet-eyed and cream-colored, hurrying toward me, saying my task name again, acting like we’re friends because of a shared bedside vigil, because I saw him cry a few times when he thought I wasn’t looking.

“Abel,” says the fighter. He sounds cold about, but I’m full of flame and daggers at the idea of the two of them getting close. He’s sweet on the navigator even if he wants to deny it, and I never thought myself capable of feeling such petty jealousy.

The navigator slows as he approaches. He’s got dark brows despite being so prettily pale and perfect, and the ink-brush line of them pulls tight. I don’t like the appraising way he looks at me, looks at the fighter, acts like he’s the least bit concerned as he says, “Oh, are you all right?”

I shrug at him, wish I was someplace else, and get between the two of them, the fighter at my back. I don’t want them to get close again. The navigator already took one fighter from me. I can’t let him take the other.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says. All anxious and in a rush, quivering with tension like some little yappy dog, big wet-eyes gone entirely to mush. “I need you to come talk to Cain.”

I nearly laugh. The ugly little sound rushes up in my throat and then disappears as I swallow, hard, almost choking. By the way the navigator’s gaze flicks up toward the fighter at my back, his reaction has to be as hysterical in reality as it is in my imagination.

“I think he’s speaking Russian,” he says. Sounding apologetic about it, like it’s his damn fault for not understanding some bastard colony tongue. “I heard him say myshonok. That’s what he calls you, right?”

I could punch him for it. Jump at him, get my claws out, rip his pretty perfect face to shreds, make him less pretty and perfect, make him something ugly so maybe my wild, beautiful mad dog won’t want him anymore, won’t want him more than some little grey mouse. I could kill him, and then there would only be me, but he had only me for a while and still didn’t want me.

The fighter puts a hand on my shoulders and says, “Deimos should go—“

He’s going to make some excuse for me, I can tell, I can hear the slight apology, the firmness, the way he’s talking over my head like I’m not right the fuck there under his hand. I hunch my shoulders, shrugging him off, and start walking.

Quick steps, because I want this over with, because if I try to go slow I’ll turn and run. The hallway seems longer than before, longer than ever, an endless death march that I take with a brisk pace. My chest grows tight, my palms sweat, I feel faint and shivery, stomach churning, like dying again all over because I’m so panicked, stuck in some nightmare, walking with the navigator at my side, everything so painful so the air is cold, sharp, cutting me open inside with each tight, shallow breath, my blood molten hot, searing my veins with each rushing heartbeat.

The fighter comes after us even though no one asked him to, so it’s all of us in a tiny fucking white room, the dog, the mouse, the lion, and the wet-eyed navigator who isn’t anything at all and everything at once. I’d rather be in some cramped utility closet, getting fucked hard against the shelves, or even down in dark maintenance passages, wheezing breath closing off into silence, knowing I’m going to die but knowing the hot blood over my hands means I’ve done my part of the plan all the same.

“Cain?” says the navigator. His soft, pretty little whisper, voice sweet and perfect. He’s whispering because he wants to, not because he has to, because the wounded fighter in the bed looks asleep, grumpy-faced and frowning in a way that’s cute, some skinny pup in a skinny bed.

His dark eyes open, cranky face tightening into a glare. “ _Go away_.” He’s snarling in his mother’s tongue, bastard colonial slur. “ _I told you to go the fuck away already.”_

And now the navigator looks worried, eyes gone to mud, but he speaks sharply, trying to tease. He’s got such a smooth voice, the stupid little navigator, pretty and sweet like a soft sugar cake. “Don’t be rude,” he says. It isn’t like understands the words, but the tone was universally recognizable. 

I get close to the bed because I have to, because my voice is just an ugly little rasp, because I can’t do anything other than whisper. Everyone’s just watching me to see what happens, except the wounded fighter, he’s just glaring at his navigator in a way that takes my breath away, makes it hard to hear over the sick-quick rush of my pulse.

I bet the navigator doesn’t know him as well as I do, doesn’t know what’s going on behind the tight peak of his brows, doesn’t know what that glare means. And I do, because I know him so well, I’ve known him so long, and he fucking told me because he thought I was his stupid pretty perfect little navigator, cream-colored and fierce despite looking so sweet, scarred but defiant. He isn’t some cringing loyal mouse with an ugly little rasp, scrawny worthless body, slutty wet mouth. He’s all softhearted goodness and happy childhood, probably never cried from hunger, probably never cut a man’s face open to stop a fight, never got bent over boxes, beaten, forced to his knees on cold, hard cement, bruised and gagging, blood in his mouth.

They handed him to his fighter on a silver platter, ripe for the taking, something to scar and fuck, something sweet for him because he’s sweet all the way down deep inside, a prowling junkyard dog always out to prove he’s tough, never so tough as he thinks, needy in ways he hates, and this pretty perfect navigator is what he needs, what he wants, something he loves because he fucking told me.

So I get angry, which is kind of nice, barely able to see straight because I’m so messed up inside. I somehow keep my voice level. “ _You’re talking trash_ ,” I tell him. Loud as I dare, still just a whisper, so fucking ugly, all raw and rasped.

It makes him look at me, shift his glare. “ _What_?” And then again, less snappish, more confused. “ _What’re you doing here, myshonok_?” And then again, back to be angry, irritable. “ _I was looking for you_.”

I shrug, because he can go fuck himself, go fuck his navigator, put that cream-colored sweet ass against some shelves and call him stupid endearments, be sweet about it, rough so it’s sexy, snarl and bite because he wants to seem tough.

Over my shoulder now, noticing the big fucking party we’re having for him. “ _What’s the Cyclops doing here?_ ”

I have to get closer, edging forward on numb feet, hands gripping the short plastic rail. I’m right up against the navigator’s side, because I want him to get a good look at us, remember which one is which, not say anything to me that’ll hurt. I lean forward, whispering because I want to now, not because I have to. “ _You can’t be Sacha_ ,” I tell him. “ _You have to be Cain_.”

He scowls at me, puzzles it out, not a lot of sense in his eyes because he’s wounded, been drugged for the pain. I see the words register, I see his tongue run over his lips, mouth working like he tastes the harsh sounds that just came out of him.

“ _I know that_ ,” he snaps. Defensive, skittish, so we both know it’s a lie, that he’s spooked himself with it. He searches over the room, looking at the three of us, so weak and unsure but stronger than last night, strong enough to glare and act tough. “ _Make Abel leave_.”

The navigator starts, having recognized his task name, and says, “I’m right here, Cain.”

We both look at him for it, like he’s gone soft in the head as well as the heart. I press my lips together, try not to laugh. The skinny wounded fighter looks so insulted, so irritable, that I know what’s gotten him twisted around like this. He’s got to be the tough one for his navigator, has to seem like he’s stronger than he is, and the reason why that it has to be like that is sobering, painful. Equally agonizing is that he’d be okay letting me see him like this, the trust in that knowledge somehow worse.

I don’t want to be here anymore. Here being this room, this medical bay, this battleship, this war, this section of space, this slowly rotating planet and its colonies. I just don’t want to be anymore, because it hurts, because it’s confusing and messy, complicated. I tighten my hands so the knuckles turn white, bright with it, like the walls and the sheets, the bandages swathing together the wounded fighter’s weakened body. My knees shake. I feel sick and dizzy. It takes a lot of effort to swallow, keep my voice level, tell him, “ _He’s worried for you_.”

“No fucking shit,” he snarls. With the right words this time, so everyone can understand him instead of just me. He closes his eyes, brow tight, glaring even though he can’t see us to glare at us. “ _Tell him I’m going to sleep_.”

He’s like a stupid little kid, always has been when hurt, like the time he caught a bad fever when we were on shore leave, drank and caroused anyway, spent the next day in bed moaning about it, throwing pillows at me for trying to get his stubborn ass to drink the stupid soup I brought.

“Is he in pain?” asks the navigator, voice tight with concern, whispering at me like we can’t fucking hear him anyway.

The other fighter’s been quiet this whole time, just watching with his lopsided dark gaze. “Abel,” he says, in his hushed up voice like he’s some pretty perfect navigator as well. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“No, I…” The navigator hasn’t got an excuse besides not wanting to leave medical, and everyone knows it.

“ _Why the fuck is Praxis talking to Abel_?” One eye pops open, a mad dog’s fierce glare, all bark and no bite because he probably couldn’t even get out of the bed, couldn’t even throw a punch.

“ _Because you won’t,”_ he snaps in return.

It startles me, because I didn’t know he understood, had no idea he could understand us, and I feel my brows stretching back, eyes going wide. I have to run through the conversation, think about what I said, wonder what the fuck I could have said that would make me feel this panicked, this flustered.

“Tch!” He’s back to being grouchy again, some stupid skinny pup. I wonder if he’d try to throw a pillow at me if I brought soup again.

The navigator swivels wide dark eyes at us, something lost and confused, anxious because we’re all so tense, because he can’t understand anything except his own name.

“Deimos hasn’t had dinner either.” He’s somehow managing to sound calm about this, the lines of his face smooth on both sides, even beneath the patch. “Why don’t you both go eat? I’ll sit with Cain.”

“ _Don’t you fucking dare_.”

“Are you sure?” The navigator bites his lip, looks anxiously at his wounded fighter.

“I don’t mind,” he says. Casual about it, so that I stare at him, shift my eyes to the navigator, look back at him again. I don’t like the chivalrous tone, the sweetness to it. Jealousy claws at me, makes the air thick.

“ _Myshonok_ ,” he snaps. “ _You stay. Make everyone else leave_.”

It’s dizzying, everything about this strange to me, because I don’t want to leave the dog and the lion alone together. They’re not meant to be in the same room, they can’t stand each other, I know they hate each other, because of the wet-eyed navigator who one has and the other wants.

I don’t really know how it happens. I don’t remember letting go of the bed rail, I don’t remember which one of them put a hand over mine and made it happen. I’m just in the hall, with the navigator, following after him, leaving everything else behind.

 


	14. Part Two, Chapter Six

It isn’t like we have much to say to each other, so the whole trip to the mess hall is silence, the meal is silent besides his quiet little gratitude. Awkward, terrible, lengthy silence, but maybe he doesn’t notice it because I’m always quiet. I can’t stop thinking, so it’s horrible, because there’s so much to think about and none of it anything I want. 

The navigator peeps at me, looks like wants to say something, maybe knows me well enough by now not to bother. He heard me talking enough, talking at his fighter, swapping harsh, ugly little voices that aren’t anything at all.

He’s out in the hall when we get back, face thunder beneath the dark cloud of the patch, so I know immediately that everything’s gone wrong in some horrible way, and it’s anxious knots all over my stomach, making me sick with guilt, the meal I just ate churning around like maybe it won’t stay.

They swap little pleasantries, my fighter and the wet-eyed navigator, stuff about the mad dog is asleep, about how the navigator should go sleep as well, try to soothe out the dark circles from his pretty wet eyes. I stand there, frozen, ice all the way deep, so scared because everything is bewildering, because he’s so angry, and I wonder if he knows what the wounded fighter tried to tell his pretty perfect navigator, told me instead, and wonder if he isn’t more upset because he’s sweet on the navigator, would rather have someone pretty and perfect, someone pale and sweet, someone who isn’t a little grey slutty mouse.

I turn around and start walking, my feet taking over because they’re the only part of me still functioning. It’s running away without seeming like it, walking briskly because I can’t stay here, just trying to get away from the pain but it’s in me, so I don’t even know why I’m running. And I am, running, boots pounding the floor of the Sleipnir, the quiet scurrying of a stupid mouse, chest so tight and heart so loud. I barrel through two maintenance workers, knock one of them aside in such a way that I nearly go down as well, and I hear someone behind me shout apology, so I know that I’m being chased.

He catches me easily enough, long-legged and strong, and it isn’t like I knew where I was going anyway. He turns me into him, says, “Deimos—“

And it’s something wild, what I am, lungs hitching, tears streaming, flailing at him with my hands and making the most awful noises. I’m not some pretty perfect cream-colored navigator, I’m not pure inside in a way that’s sweet, I know that, I know that so much that hurt all the way deep. I’ve got an ugly little voice, skinny scrawny body, I’m broken up inside and fractured, nothing left to me but pieces. I try to make the pieces fit in a way that works, but he doesn’t want me, he wants that navigator.

He was the first person to ever look out for me, to ever care about me, to cuddle up next to me in a skinny top bunk and say something nice, push at me so I’d get stronger, show me how to fight because all I ever wanted to do was fight and I just didn’t know how. He knows me better than anyone and knows how I feel about him and won’t let me go because he knows it would devastate me, knows he can’t push me away, maybe wants me near because I want him so terribly, because I’d do anything for him. He’s been all I have, my everything, for far too long, the only thing that was ever mine I gave to him, the only thing about me worth a damn.

“Deimos, please, calm down—“

“Nnnugh!” Not even a word, just something broken, he’s gotten my wrists in his hands so I can’t hit at him anymore, folded me up against his big chest, voice shaking as he tries to talk reason into me.

 “Deimos, please, baby, you gotta calm down.”

I’m mad at him, too, so mad I can’t stand it, because he’s so gentle and nice that it hurts, that I don’t know what to do because I’m just so worthless, used up, and he’s going to find out eventually that there’s nothing more to it than fucking me slow. He’ll figure out I’m too much trouble, I want too much, and he’ll push me away because he doesn’t want me, hit me when I try to tell him something beautiful because my voice is so ugly, because I’m ugly all the way deep inside, I’m not pretty and perfect like some wet-eyed navigator with soft white skin.

I hit up against a break point, shatter, go limp in his arms except for the wracking heaves, the terrible noises I can’t stop, crying because that’s all I fucking do anymore, each time harder than the last in a way I didn’t even know was possible. He’s all over me with concern, hefting my suddenly lax weight, kissing my salted cheeks, finally just picking me up entirely because I won’t stand on my own anymore.

He finds somewhere, some stupid cramped utility closet, and I wonder hysterically if he’s going to put me against the shelves, fuck the crazy out of me, gag his cock into my mouth so I stop crying. It makes me beat at him again, shove at him with all my knock-kneed strength, so that he lets go in surprise. I fall against the shelves, almost bring them down on top of me, bounce to the floor  and lay there in a limp, huddled heap, sobbing because I’m so fucking worthless, because I can’t get my shit together, because I have nothing left in me except all this fucking heartbreak.

“Shit,” he says. “Shit, Deimos, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” And he kneels, paws at my shoulders, pets my hair, tries to pick me up off the floor.

“Sss-sst.” I’m shuddering too hard to get the word out, too broken to make him stop. I just push at him instead, sit myself up against the shelves. I fold my knees to my chest, curl my head into them, trying to be small like when I was little, when I thought that being small meant I wouldn’t get noticed, before I became a little grey mouse who could make himself go unnoticed.

He’s there between me and the door, so concerned and gentle, stroking his hand over my shin and ankle because I won’t push him off me for just that little amount of touching, won’t flinch away when he’s just petting at my fucking feet. I don’t want him being this nice to me, I hate everything so intensely because it’s the only safe emotion I have left.

“Deimos,” he says. Wounded, like I actually hurt him earlier with my weak worthless blows. “Honey, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”

I want to know what he said to the wounded fighter when they were alone in medical, I want to know if the fighter said anything about me, if the mad dog cares at all for the grey little mouse or if I’m just convenient, stubborn, something awkward that he can’t get rid of, something pathetic he feels responsible for.

I hunch my shoulders, sob harder, wish so desperately I could be anywhere other than here, that I could go back to the night I lost my voice and stay silent, never say anything ever again, never say to Sacha that I loved him, never made him into a mad dog with it so he had to beat me away, shove me down, slap sense into my stupid slutty head. I want to hate him for it, want to hate him for making me like this, for keeping me close even though he never wanted me, for making me think I stood some chance when all he ever wanted was a pretty perfect navigator, when I’m nothing like what he wants, when I’m just nothing, nothing, nothing.

Something within me releases, snaps, breaks, shatters, fractures, utter devastation that’s so painful because he’s so gentle, so sincere, everything about him trying to be nice to me, everything about him so loving and tender. I muffle my face into my knees, cringe tighter, rasp my ugly little voice out of sobs and into one single, frustrated, furious yell. It’s hoarse, so raw, not loud at all but it feels like it to me, because I am so angry, hurt, sad, scared, confused, so tired of feeling like this and helpless with my fury.

He gets me into a hug, crushes me with it, won’t let me push him away this time. He’s so tight over me, almost suffocating, says with desperation, “Deimos, I love you, I love you so much.”

I put my arms over him, cling at him, wanting so desperately all his strength in that moment, so overwhelmed by it, made dizzy and sick.

“O-oh.” He kind of breathes it, surprised by the sudden burst of my assault, the desperate way I clutch him. His voice is thick and choking, wet and lumpy, like maybe he’s going to start crying, too, because I’m such a fuck up I need to ruin this, need to ruin everything beautiful, anything good that ever happens to me.

He says, “God, Deimos… It’s okay. Baby, I love you so much. Take your time. You don’t have to tell me anything, okay? I’m so sorry for pushing it. Just take your time.”

Guilt bubbles up out of me, floats away, pops into iridescence. I stop crying, keep sobbing, such a fucking mess that I hate, but it’s getting better, things aren’t quite so sideways, I feel like maybe I can be a real person again somehow. There’s something missing now, something ripped out of me in all the chaos, something that leaves behind buoyancy rather than the great, gaping hole that I expected.

I think maybe he senses it, maybe he figures out I’m a bit less unstable, that he can let me go just a little and not have to worry that I’ll fall apart. He backs me off his chest, keeps hold of me like he’ll never let go, looks at me with soft, gentle worry. His brow is twisted beneath the line of his patch, furrowed with how strongly he cares. I swallow. Feel funny all over.

“A-Abel,” I try to say. Hitch and whine about it, lungs gone screwy, diaphragm jumping, barely able to breathe with how hard I’ve broken.

“Oh, no,” he says. “No, baby, I told you.” He dares to pet at my hair, run his big hand against the back of my neck. “Please believe me, you’re the only one for me. I would never, okay? I’m so sorry you saw that the other day – And tonight, Deimos, I was just trying to help. I was just worried about you. I won’t go near him again, okay? If that’s what it takes for you to trust me, Deimos, I’ll do it. Next time he tries to talk to me, I’ll tell him to go fuck himself.”

It pulls a strange blubbering mess out of me, something so much uglier than usual, not funny at all so I don’t know why I laugh. It ends with sobbing, dangerously wet, before I get myself under control. I shake my head at him, breathe so fast it’s terrifying, makes him pet at me with concern, hush calm at me until it sticks.

“Cain—“ I scrunch my eyes shut, flinch with my whole body, want to deny it so badly but I can’t. Tell him, “Cain loves Abel.”

He doesn’t laugh, but something horrible happens to his face so I think he wants to, wants to scoff and call me a liar except his gaze is so serious, so focused on me. He starts to frown, like maybe he doesn’t understand, and then asks quietly, “How do you know?”

Like he’s missing both eyes instead of just one, like he didn’t just see the same thing that I did in medical, like he’s so fucking stupid I could scream again. I don’t, though, just drop my voice so it’s nothing, so it can’t hurt that much even though it’s about the ugliest thing I’ve ever said. “Told me.”

“He told you he _loves_ Abel?”

I wonder if it hurts him, because he’s right that I don’t trust him, can’t trust him, because the only reason he ever went after me was because of that wet-eyed navigator I know he’s sweet on, that I know he’d take if he could get. Not like me, something everyone can have and no one wants.

I nod, say, “Thought I was Abel. Told me.” Harder to talk now, I’m running out sound otherwise, deflating with it, starting to become hollow because something’s gone from within me. “He. Loved. Me—“

“Don’t,” he says, strangled-liked, voice raw. “Deimos, no, baby, don’t. Don’t do that to yourself.”

His denial is so strong, he’s so horrified on my behalf, he can’t articulate it, can’t stand to hear me say it. He pulls my face into his shoulder, strokes my back, rubs my neck, frantically trying to work comfort into me with it.

He pulls me into his lap so we’re more comfortable, so I can pretend we aren’t in some stupid cramped utility closet. I get quiet, figure out how to get my lungs working normally again, shiver a bit until his warmth reaches through, until I’m calm against him, numb with it, feeling weightless and floating. Something’s been pressing down on me for so long, something making me feel so small, and without it I feel wrong, scared deep down. It makes me huddle into him, curl my fingers into his hair, nudge at his neck with my nose and whine about it.

“I should punch him,” he says. Teeth grit, sharp enough to sting. “To hell with it, I’m going back there and punching him.”

I hold him tighter, shake my head.

“Deimos,” he says. “Deimos, he has no right to treat you like this. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. He’s not good for you, baby, do you understand that? You need to get away from him. You have to let him go. You deserve so much better. Do you understand? Deimos, you are just so much better than that.”

Yesterday I might have yelled at him for it, last week I might have hit him for it, last month I might have cut his fucking throat for it, but today after everything, right at that moment in the stupid closet, I love him for it. Love him so much I can’t stand it, that it makes me press close against him, makes me feel panicky and jittery. I have to kiss him, put everything into it, lips wet and gritty with tears, I’ve got to look a mess, I can’t believe he’d ever want to kiss something wrecked and ruined like me, but he’s so gentle, so earnest.

He pulls my bangs from my face, cups my cheek, kisses me sweetly. Says, “Deimos, if I tell you something, will you promise not to get upset?”

I stare at him, suddenly wary, wondering why the fuck he’d have to say something like that.

He sees it, knows he’s spooked me, runs a hand over my back and kisses me again, quick and anxious. “I know, I don’t want to, this is horrible timing, but I can’t keep it from you. I won’t lie to you.” He’s babbling, being stupid, making me worry like I don’t have enough fucking problems at the moment without him adding to them.

And then he actually bites his lip, looks a bit nervous says, “I told Cain how I feel about you.”

I just stare at him, because the words aren’t real. I heard him, I understood the syllables and sounds that comprised language into meaning, but it doesn’t make sense. The statement just hits up against me and falls flat, stunned and twitching like some bird into glass.

He rushes to explain, like I want to hear more fucking nonsense words. “When you and Abel went to eat dinner. He just – I just – He’s so bad for you, Deimos, he treats you so terrible. He doesn’t deserve you. I’m not really sure I deserve you, but, I want to try. I want to be something good for you, baby, I want what we have to be good. It can’t be like that if he’s always going to be between us.”

I still don’t say anything, still just stare at him like some fucking statue, fancy expensive carved ice like you see at posh catered buffets that little mice aren’t allowed to attend, where everyone starts shrieking and panicking if see one, because I’ve gone to nonsense and back just staring at him.

He looks so anxious, so scared of me or maybe more like he’s scared of what he’s done, what he’s having to tell me. His brow draws together, his tongue runs over his lips. “Deimos, you love me, don’t you? You want to be with me? I know you’re hung up on Cain, on Sacha, but—“

“Shut up.” It blurts out of me, sharp like I didn’t know my little rasp could sound. “Stop – stop talking.”

It makes his mouth snip closed, makes him stare at me, because I’ve never talked back to him like that, never used my voice as a weapon when I’ve got my knives instead. I swallow something unsteady, blink until I feel like maybe I can stop staring, like maybe things can be real again.

“Deimos,” he says. Slowly, like talking down some larger beast than just a stupid mouse. “Deimos, I’m not sorry I say it – I do love you, I don’t care who knows. Don’t be mad, baby, but you have to realize that Cain doesn’t feel that way about you. He’s never going to treat you right, he’s never going to stop using you, not unless—“

“Shut up!” Even sharper now, so we both get a little wide-eyed, both get a little tense, like maybe it won’t be okay afterward, that something in my throat will give way under the sudden pressure. I recover first, scowl at him, scrunch up my face so he won’t see how close to crying again I am.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “Deimos? I’m sorry. That was out of line. I shouldn’t have said that.”

I drop my glare, knot my fingers together and look at the white sheen of my knuckles under the force of it. Speak quietly, so quiet he has to lean forward. “Don’t want to anymore.”

I can almost hear him swallow, hear the fear in his voice, how desperately calm he tries to stay. Like he doesn’t want to know the answer, like he’s so scared to ask but has to, has to force the words out. “What don’t you want to do anymore?”

Because he thinks I mean him, that I mean us, that I want to throw away the only truly good thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m trying to wreck it everyday, keep trying to ruin things, but somehow he’s always there, gentle, so fucking strong that maybe I think he can be strong enough for the two of us, that maybe I can’t break him so easily.

I lift my eyes up again, see how anxious he looks, how controlled he’d trying to seem, and it’s almost intoxicating how fragile he is in this moment, how I could ruin him so easily because he’s let me become so much to him. It’s a warm kind of feeling, something that crunches through my chest and makes me feel dizzy and weak in a wondrous way.

I take in a breath and let it out slow, let go of everything and say, “Don’t want to love Sacha.”

See it hit deep, see his eye close for a moment, the tension slack off his face. Feel it in the way he hugs me, pulls me to him in a way that’s soft, so gentle, the little tremble of his arms and the shaking way he holds me against his chest. Know it all the way down deep that I’ve done something good.

 


	15. Part Two, Chapter Seven

He keeps to my side at meals and meetings, walks with me whenever he can, so it’s nice, so eventually the Lead Fighter starts to notice. It’s the Lead Navigator with his pretty pale smile who pulls me aside and asks if things are okay, because there’s puckered scar in my flank that says it shouldn’t be. He looks sweet and milk-white, not even cream just pale and fragile like glass, some sweet-smiling shepherd of the sheep.  I have to shrug and act like it’s fine, like it isn’t something that secretly thrills me, that it isn’t something I need him to do so I’m safe.

It’s easy at first, with him there to distract me, so long as I don’t go to medical and the wounded fighter can’t leave. His wet-eyed navigator won’t cross the mess hall to talk to me, for all the better since I can’t trust myself to stay calm if he tries, if he tells me the dog’s been calling for me, looking for his mouse.

He sends the little lamb after me instead, the round-faced little navigator who I see all the time, who sometimes sits with me to play cards or talks to me about nothing in particular, when the fighter has to be somewhere I can’t follow, or the three of us play cards, or they talk about nothing while I listen, so it’s nice, so I think maybe it’ll be okay, because he can’t leave medical and they won’t let me go there to see him.

Until the poor lamb has to go up for the slaughter, gets caught into the mess more than he wants. He waits until it’s one of those night I’m staying over, when it’s the three of us playing cards and lazily drinking from a bottle that the lamb won on a stupid navigator bet, some lucky draw based on numbers, something boring and mathematical and safe.

I’m in the bathroom, a bit knocked across the head from being drunk, washing my face slow and lethargic because the warm water feels nice, and the little navigator hasn’t realized yet that sound carries, or thinks he can whisper soft enough.

“Praxis?”

“Mhm?” Small sounds, fabric shifting, the fighter either sitting up or lying down.

“Praxis, Abel asked me about Deimos today. I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“Okay,” he says. Wary about it, maybe warning at him, and I can imagine them both looking at the bathroom door, both listening to the soft rush of the sink. “What did he ask about?”

“About, um, the two of you. Just, if it was okay. I told him not to worry about your, um, fight.”

The one we never had but everyone thinks we did, a story made up to hide how a wolf shook me in his jaws, cut me open, while I killed him just like I meant to, like I set out to do from the start. Not part of the plan for me to get stabbed, not part of my plan to live after it, so the brave noble lion carried a dying little mouse to medical and sold them a sweet-smelling pack of lies.

He says, “Okay, and?”

“Well, that’s it, I guess. Except he gave me a message for Deimos. From—“

“Don’t,” he snaps. He’s very rarely cross with his navigator, and it’s one of those times. “Don’t tell me. If you tell me, I’ll have to tell to Deimos. I don’t want to keep secrets from him.”

I press my cheek into the door, my hand as well, draping myself against it to eavesdrop and because I’m just kind of drunk, just enough that his words make me smile and feel warm. And then terrified, because it means the dog’s been looking for his mouse, wondering why I’m not at his side where I belong. When I was laid up in medical, stitched together and weak, he came nearly every day, promised to be there again if I slept, so I would sleep and feel safe. Almost carried me to my room when medical released me, just a skinny pup taking care of me, needing someone to take care of him in return, the two of us curled together in a skinny top bunk.

“But, Praxis—“

“Ethos,” he says. And then whispers so quietly that I can’t hear, so I turn off the water and still can’t hear, open the door just in time to hear him say, “—how he is.”

They amazingly don’t look as guilty as they should, whispering about me. Well, the navigator does, peeping at me like the sweet little lamb that he is, cream-colored and fluffy, with big round-eyes and a timid smile, steel core down deep where it matters. The fighter is less obvious, more controlled, calm about it. He’s leaned back against the dresser, legs out toward the pushed together mattresses.

It’s a weird moment when I want to know what the secret is and very desperately do not. I look at the fighter and realize he knows I overheard them, his face utterly placid about that fact. He shifts his shoulder, rolls his hand across the floor with invitation. If I demand to know the secret, he’ll make the navigator tell me. I know he will, that’s what he’s saying to me, offering me everything with the same gentleness as ever.

So I sit next to him, don’t ask about it, don’t make the lamb nervous with my stare as he takes his turn in the bathroom getting ready for bed. The fighter gets his arm around me, holds me to him, turns his mouth into the top of my head and kisses my hair. We’re content like that for a bit, warm and fuzzy because I’m drunk, before moving apart, getting situated along the mattresses.

The navigator finishes getting ready, turns off the lights, stumbles in the dark and giggles about it, nervous, like we’ll yell at him for kicking the end of the bedding. “Night, Praxis. Night, Deimos,” he whispers, once rolled up into a pale lump against the wall. Always like that, even after everything, after I killed the wolf for him, maybe because he had to do it in the end, gore open the dark-skinned fighter’s throat and roll the dead body off me.

It’s fresh on my mind, then, what happened in the maintenance passages of the Sleipnir, what’s waiting for me in medical, safely coddled in bandages but getting stronger everyday. It’s no surprise when I dream about it, the strange hodge-podge of terrors, hands in my hair, pressure and pushing, red and black flashes, that terrible strangled, choking, suffocating sensation where I’m counting heartbeats waiting to die and there’s someone saying sweet things while I rock against the shelves, still getting choked.

I wake up panicked, flushed like I’m on fire, breath desperate and short, ragged, rasping so it’s painful, so I can’t breathe at all, still choking even though I’m awake. It’s awful. He’s still sleeping, so I must not have thrashed too much, must not have gotten too loud He’s turned toward me, leg over mine, mouth against my shoulder, arm across my chest. Still sleeping, so I have to calm down, have to wait for the shaking to stop.

And then it’s slow, getting his arm off me first, shifting my leg out from under him. He stirs, makes me think I might have woken him up after all, but he just rolls on to his back, murmurs nonsense, goes still again, chest moving up and down in a way that’s smooth and deep. The little white roll of navigator against the wall is likewise quiet and still, so I’m pretty sure I’m the only one of us awake.

It takes a moment to orient myself in the dark room even though there’s nothing there but the dresser and us. I get dressed quickly, quietly, taking my boots in hand rather than risk putting them on and make noise. I put them on in the hall instead, get my feet into them and start walking briskly, before my nerve leaves, before the strangeness of the dream and the warmth of the tipsy-drunk bleariness fades.

Already in the lift by the time I start to second-guess myself. Wake up more, start to feel panicked, frantic, hitting the button for any other floor than medical. It’s too late, so that the doors open with me plastered into the corner staring out at the hallway, like it’s some fucking nightmare that I can choose to avoid if I just stay in the lift. Which is what happens, it’s precisely what happens, the door closes again with me still inside, still safe.

I can’t get myself off the wall, I’ve become attached to it, pressed flat and drunk, heart racing, awake enough now that I wonder what the fuck I’m doing, what I thought I was doing. I told him I didn’t want to anymore, practically promised him I wouldn’t, made him follow me around like a bodyguard even though I’m safe so long as the mad dog can’t leave the bright white cage.

I have to get back to the room before he wakes up and realizes I’m gone, before he finds my clothes missing and figures it out, maybe starts to think this isn’t the first time I’ve snuck out at night.

I feel guilty and terrified, scared all the way down, so anxious and shaky. The lift isn’t moving, it’s just sitting there at the medical level, awaiting the next command to start whisking silently through the battleship. I should press the button for the dorm level, get back to him before he wakes up, but I’m just frozen against the wall, shaking, tangled up inside and broken.

The lift starts to move without me having pressed anything. Down, down, to the fighters’ base. I pull myself from the wall, wonder what the fuck I’m doing, head spinning because I’m drunk, shaken, maybe still sleeping so it’s just another nightmare and the doors glide open and three fighters find me standing there.

So I have to get out of the lift, not seem like I’m frozen, not wanting to be alone with them. It’s tense for a moment, I think maybe they won’t let me pass, they’re all much taller than me because all the fighters are, most the navigators as well, even the little lamb although we might be closer to the same. I haven’t exactly put him against a wall to measure.

I try not to look weak-kneed and shaking even though that’s exactly how I feel. I walk like I’m not just walking in a circle, looping around through the hard angles and shadowed passages just to get back to the lift. There’s two fighters leaned against a rail smoking, indolent with cruelty, eyes lingering as I approach and start to pass. I can’t stop myself, I’m too nervous, I’ve forgotten how to be a mouse. I glance sideways, catch the stare, flick my gaze away just as quickly but it’s too late.

“Hey,” he says. Slow and lazy, languid threat, bigger than me and he knows it, not alone like I am, probably willing to share with his friend once they get me aside, get me where they want. Maybe willing to take me at once, bend me over and stuff me full.

My heart beats faster, my palms start to slick with fear. I keep walking, don’t turn around, don’t look like I’m interested even though some part of me is, some part of me that’s scared and shaken, weak and unsteady. He’ll never forgive me if I let this happen, so I have to ignore them, make it clear I’m not interested. I can’t let this happen, can’t let him know I’ve been down here. I need to get back to the pushed together bed before he notices I’m gone, knows how weak I really am.

I hear them laugh, my back itches like expecting to get shot, that painful anticipation where something’s coming but I don’t know what. And then it’s a fighter’s boots against the floor, coming after me, slow and lazy like it’s all a game. I walk a bit quicker, try to make it clear I’m walking away from them, that I’m not interested, that my look wasn’t anything, that I’m not some slutty mouse anymore. I think I sucked the shorter one’s dick once, don’t really remember too clearly, might remember if I saw his dick again, got it in my mouth.

Want to turn around and yell it at them, let them know I didn’t come here for that. I bring a knife down instead, flicking my wrist so maybe they see it, maybe they don’t, maybe they ought to stop following me. Can’t look like I’m running away, can’t look weak, can’t look like it’s a game.

They’re drunk, too. I know it when one of them catches my shoulder, spins me into the wall, breathes hot, sickly sweet, smells like liquor and malice. “Hey,” he says. Strokes the back of his hand over my cheek.

I put the knife up between us, under his chin, so quick it makes his eyes widen. It’s the short one, the one who got me on my knees before, put a hand through my hair, gagged me on his cock like he wanted, like I didn’t really want but let happen anyway because I didn’t have any reason to stop it, made him think I liked it because it was easy.

I’ve got a lot of reasons to stop him now. Not because I’m in a hurry, not because I don’t feel like it, but because I’m terrified of him, of what he wants, scared like I hate, in a way that makes me want to lower the knife and be a whore since it’s easier. But I can’t, because it isn’t just about what I want now, and if I let this happen he’ll never forgive me.

“Tch,” he says. Backs off some, sneering at me for it.

I’ve got to keep my eyes on them both, there’s two of them and me all alone. I keep my glare steady, my hand steadier, making it clear to them this isn’t going further, I’m not interested.

He lets me go, makes a big deal about it, hand up and looking smug. I have to slip sideways, keep my eye on him and his friend, start my walking and eventually turn my back.

Three quick steps, so I turn at the same time, whirling around with the knife out, staggered by it anyway so I get nothing but fabric. We go down together, him on top of me so it’s hard, so it’s stars with my head cracking the walkway, so it’s breathless from the blow and from my own fear.

I thrash at him, fierce and desperate, making him laugh in a way that sounds surprised, like this is all still part of the game because I swallowed his filthy cock one time, maybe two. Can’t get the knife around at him now, he’s got my wrists, the other fighter my ankles, the strong press of hands putting bruises into me, the hated feel of his thighs and hips across mine, straddling and pinning.

“Unnf! Sst!” I try to yell, just snipping at the air, so fucking angry because I don’t want to be scared.

He twists his hand over both my wrists, I’m so fucking scrawny that he can do that, hold me down with just one big hand. Leans over me, rises on his knees, starts at his belt because he wants my mouth, he’s going to gag me so I can’t yell anymore, can’t make stupid raspy cries because I haven’t got a voice to say no.

“Aahr!” Louder, rolling my shoulders and bucking my hips, trying to kick and scratch and bite and scream, not going to let this happen because he’ll never forgive me if I do, because I’ve got to be better than this, can’t lose this fight or it’ll break me.

He’s got his pants open now, cock out and wagging, clumsy as he tries to stroke himself harder. I snip my teeth, let him know I’ll fucking bite him if he tries, chest heaving, three seconds away from losing it entirely, each fucking heartbeat worse than the last.

Try to yell, can’t really, just comes out rasping. “Ssstt!”

He slaps me for it, tells me to shut up, but he loses one of my writs with it, only has my right hand now, thinks that’s going to be okay. Letting go of me was a huge mistake and I’m going to teach him that a mouse has claws. Get the other knife out, the one in my off hand, the one everyone always forgets about, and slice at him. The blade whisks the air, flutters a gap into his shirt and draws a scratchy line across his chest, just enough to sting, just enough to make pinpricks of blood appear.

Kick and roll, lose a boot because the other one won’t let go, they’re clumsy and drunk, made stupid with cruelty, playing at me like this is all some fucking game when I’m deathly serious, so scared I can’t think straight, trying to stay angry so I don’t feel like giving up just so I won’t be afraid like this.

And it works, I get away, stumbling down the walkway until I hear them laughing, getting to their feet, calling after me, drunk and amused like it’s all just a game. Keep running until I can’t anymore, until my lungs are bursting, so scared and hating it. I fall down, huddle there, wish I could be so small that no one ever noticed me, forget that I’m a little grey mouse. Not even a mouse, not even a goddamn recruit, something worse, something I used to be, some little thing trying to hide, wishing no one ever saw me, shivering and sobbing so it’s like I’ve gone crazy, drunk and stupid.

Calm down eventually, hate myself for it, get angry as I scrub my face and get to my feet. I’m being something I hate, something weak and sniveling, scrub harder until I can pretend it never happened, until everything can be okay again. Start walking like it never happened, ignore the quivering lean to my walk, keep silent and small as I find my way back to the lift.

I wait until it’s safe, hiding in the shadows, slip over when no one’s around and ride all the way up staring at doors, willing them to stay closed, not sure I could handle it if they opened before I get where I want to be, where I have to be.

Lift stops where it should. The doors open and he’s there, hair mussed, clothes rumpled, shirt on inside out, jacket just slung over one shoulder, barely put together because he’s coming after me. His eye widens at the sight of me, relieved at first and then concerned, and I don’t want to see what else, don’t want to see him looking hurt and disappointed. I know I must smell like smoke from the base, stale with sweat and fear, coppery and bruised from the skirmish.

I move forward, hesitant, trembling because I’m so scared to see him start looking hurt and disappointed. I freeze, take a step back, thinking maybe I’ll go one level up, go crawl into my own bunk, get to the high ground so I’m safe.

He reaches for me, slow, and I have to go one direction or the other. I move toward him again, let him get hold of my arm, pull me forward so it’s gentle. He’s so tense, wound up tight, not saying anything as he gets his arms around me, just briefly, just as much as we can dare when we’re not alone. He guides me along, hand on my arm, gentle but firm so I can’t tell if he’s concerned or angry, trying to keep me safe or trying to keep me from bolting.

I shiver under him, so scared now that it’s over, so scared of him because what he has to be thinking, what he has to think happened. I’m not sure which is worse, explaining it to him or letting him assume, having him think I let it happen or having him think I didn’t.

I still can’t decide when he leads me back to the room, takes his boots off so we won’t step on the bed since the room’s mostly bed, tries to do the same for me and notices I’m missing one. It makes him pause, touch my leg briefly, stand up and then reach for me so I flinch. He pulls me to his chest, slow at first and then crushing, bent over me, one of us shaking so hard I think it’s me until I realize it’s not, it’s him.

He whispers at me, breath hot, voice tight. Says, “Just tell me you’re okay. Please be okay.”

So desperate that he’s almost begging me to lie, afraid I’ll lie or afraid I’ll tell the truth, torn up inside because he’s not sure either what he wants to hear, not sure what happened but just frantic for me to be okay, whatever okay can mean.

I clutch at him in return, squeeze my eyes shut even though the room is dark. Whisper it back in some horrible, ugly noise that can’t be me, can’t be what I sound like. “I’m okay.”

Hear him sigh, sigh again, holding me so tight and shaking. “Not mad, baby, promise I’m not mad, won’t get mad.”

Desolate with how he’s lying, begging me to believe him, trying to convince himself it’s the truth, so I know what he’s thinking, what he has to be thinking, how he’s begging me to believe him and tell him what happened. I curl my fingers into the back of his neck, clutch at the silk-fine gloss of his hair, always so smooth when I think it’ll be coarse.

He tips his head, eagerly sets his ear against my lips, tries to make it easy for me. I have to think about it, gather up the words, calm down enough I can manage it. “Bad dream. Wanted to see Sacha. Didn’t. Got lost. Got found, jumped. Didn’t—“ I catch around it, lungs hitching on wetness, remembering my fear, get angry about it now that it’s over, start to feel embarrassed and frustrated about it. My fault for sucking that fighter’s dick in the first place, whoring myself around so they all think I still want it.

It slips out of him, a low moan, deep horror. “No, Deimos, please, no… Baby, tell me you’re okay.” He’s shaking so bad, weak-kneed, bent over me like I have to hold him up when he’s supposed to be the strong one.

“Didn’t,” I insist. Harder with it, letting some of that anger slip through. “Didn’t want it. Didn’t let them.” Pause for a moment and lower my voice so it’s just air, nothing, delicate like spun sugar. “I’m okay.”

I hear him swallow, feel it shudder through him, feel how relieved he is and how guilty that makes him, how he’s so impossibly tender and gentle as he stops shaking, calm now that he knows I didn’t cheat on him, didn’t lose a fight, didn’t go looking for one. He pets my hair, backs off enough to look at me even though it’s dark. He strokes his hand through my hair, brushing my bangs aside, fingers trembling even though the rest of him is still.

He runs his hand over my face, the calluses of his thumb catches my lip. He feels at my neck, glosses a caress over the delicate line of my collarbone, the little divot where it meets the shoulder. His hands slide under my jacket, feel along my back, slip beneath my shirt and run along the bumps of my ribs. He takes my hands in his, rubs at my wrists, feels every fragile joint in my hands, tests the soft little curve of my nails.

His big hands encircle my waist, explore my hips, cup my bottom and then lower as he moves, he sinks to his knees, presses the side of his face against my crotch in a way that isn’t sexual at all, that’s just him resting himself against me, so relieved to find me whole, to feel the way I’m pliable against him, curious but not scared, not flinching, my clothes all in the right places, nothing wrong on me he can feel.

I get to my knees as well, we’re more even this way, and he’s sunk back on his calves so when I push forward I’m taller for once, I can get my arms over his shoulders, rest my forehead against his.

He wraps his arms around me, pulls me into him. “I love you so much. Do you understand, Deimos? I know you must have been scared, but you did the right thing. You’re so strong. God, baby, I love you, I’m so sorry this happened, but I love you, so proud of you.”

He sits back further, drags me right along with him, scooting over onto the bed so it’s comfortable. Pets at me, kisses the corner of my eye, the side of my mouth, whispers more gentle things, so dizzily relieved that he’s gotten silly with it, tells me how much he loves me over and over, keeps doing it until I scrunch my face, until he can feel me smile.

He helps me out of my clothes, no reason to other than he likes doing it, likes taking his time, kissing each new bare patch of flesh he’s able to find. I’m not sure if I’m bruised over my wrists or across my ankles, not sure if I am bruised if he can see them, feel them beneath his lips. He makes it so it doesn’t matter, so I don’t care so long as it doesn’t hurt, and he makes it so it doesn’t hurt. He gets us down under the blankets again, keeps me up against his chest where it’s warm, where his heart beats against my skin and makes me shiver in a good way.

He whispers silly things again, hushing them at me in a voice that’s barely air, saying the same sort of things over and over until the words slur, the motion of his hand through my hair gets sluggish and fades, until the hush of his voice is just breath. Even though he’s asleep, I nudge at his neck with my nose, kiss the crest of his ear. I believe him now, believe he actually wouldn’t get mad, like maybe it wouldn’t have been my fault after all, like maybe he’d forgive me but tell me there’s nothing to forgive. I curl against him, pressed so tight, feel the way his arms go around me even though he’s sleep, so I feel warm, so I feel safe, so I finally stop being scared. 


	16. Part Two, Chapter Eight

He’s at breakfast, so I’m not. Can’t make it look like I’m running, don’t want him to see me, don’t think he noticed the way I stopped, froze, turned and fucking ran, a skittering little grey mouse, walking fast with the loud tread of a fighter’s boots against the floor. Not mine, I’m being quiet, I know how to walk without making a sound, but it’s a fighter’s boots and I think maybe it’s him, he saw me after all, the growling junkyard dog come to claim his little mouse after all.

Heart racing, sweat along the back of my neck, flutters in my belly because I’ve missed him so much, felt so guilty for abandoning him, missed him like a flower needs to the sun, wilted and dying. I turn around quick, feeling scared and hopeful, ready to start apologizing, ready to throw myself at him, desperate for the salt and burn smell of him, the rough snarl of his bark, craving his bite like some used up junkie.

It’s the fighter with the eye patch, giving me a startled lopsided gaze, looking concerned because he knows why I’m running like this. He doesn’t say anything, just touches my arm lightly, the most he can do since we’re wide open and exposed standing in the corridor.

I shake my head, pull away from him, turn around and keep walking. Silent about it, since he doesn’t follow me this time, lets me get away from him when I wish he’d chase me down, hold me down, give me something hard and fast so I can forget about a mad dog’s bite.

I can’t bail on the rest of it, but he’s not there. Medical always lets them out just before they should, clearing up the beds for when they’re needed, making it so he’s up and walking but not fit for duty. Still too wounded, having to sit on the navigator’s side of the mess hall, some dark speck of soot amid all the cream-colored sweetness, easy to spot. I skip all the meals to avoid him, don’t even bother going to any of them after breakfast. Makes me light-headed and sick with hunger, but I’m dizzy already with grief and longing, wanting so desperately to see him, knowing I can’t.

I sit in my room, my safe top bunk, lazily spinning the half-drunk bottle of contraband from the other night around my ankles. My navigator’s in his bottom bunk, reading something tasteless on his tablet, something that makes him hum and gasp because he always gets like that when he reads stupid trash. We’re tacitly ignoring each other, making it almost peaceful.

Won’t take much to get me drunk, with my stomach this empty, but I just push the bottle around the bed without taking off the cap. I can’t trust myself to get wobbled-knee, blackout drunk fast enough to get through the slutty stage of being drunk, the one where I’ll go wandering, get in a fight and lose one or, maybe worse, maybe go find the mad dog and beg for a scar.

That’s how it is, then, when the door panel buzzes and beeps. There’s the awkward moment where I can hear my navigator shift, act like he isn’t going to get up, hear him sigh before getting up. It’s probably his block-headed friend, the navigator built like a fighter, the one I got to fuck me hard a while back, so now we do a lot of not talking to get along and keep functioning as a team.

“Ugh,” I hear him say. My navigator’s got a delicate kind of voice, simpering and wispy. He uses it to whine, “I guess you’re here to see Deimos.”

“Yeah, no shit. Is it he in or not?” Low and rumbling, being rude about it, the mad dog’s come looking for me, rooting the mouse out from his hiding place, and I have nowhere to go except down the ladder, across the room, drifting over to him with the inexorable lure of his gravity.

Medical always lets you go too soon. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, sick-pinched sunken cheeks, blustering and bluffing that he’s tough, that he’s leaned against the doorframe because he wants to, because he’s lazy and indolent with smug pride. He’s got to lean or else he’ll fall down. There’s a bulkiness to his chest, something unnoticeable unless you’ve memorized every inch of him, where they’ve got him wrapped up in bandages, crushed ribs and collapsed lung still on the mend.

“Hey,” he says to me. Brows drawn tight, scowling about it, something relieved flashing through his eyes, like maybe he thought I wouldn’t be here, like maybe something happened to me. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t have to, just pushes himself up from his sideways tilt and starts walking, shoulders straight, chin high, so fucking full of pride even though I bet he’s shaking inside, so weak, so desperate not to let anyone see.

Of course I follow him. We both know I will. There isn’t much point in me pretending otherwise, in hesitating, in feeling dizzy vertigo and nervousness so acute it’s a panicky seasick roil through my empty stomach. I have to quicken my pace to catch him and then slow so I don’t overtake him, so I stay I his shadow, stuck up against his side where I belong, where there’s such a deep sense of belonging. I feel so guilty and ashamed I can barely breathe. So much for promises.

He doesn’t walk very far. I don’t think he could. I have to wonder how he’s gotten here in the first place, where his wet-eyed navigator’s gone, why the stupid pretty pale perfect thing would let him go wandering alone. He’s so weak still, doesn’t the navigator know that? When he stops walking, leans against the wall, I step closer, so concerned for him, not touching him because he’ll only snap at me for it, and I’m too fucking small and skinny to hold him up anyway.

He gets his shoulders into the wall, his back, making it look like he’s doing it on purpose, that he isn’t winded, that his knees aren’t shaking. He glares at me, dares me to point it out. I just get closer, right up on his side, looking over him to memorize once again every dark line of hair, the slope of his neck, the plane of his hip, the lean length of his thighs. I’ve missed him like I didn’t even know possible.

He taps out a cigarette, cups his lighter over it. Looks at me like it’s a challenge, like I’d stop him, like I’m his fussy little navigator who probably kept him from smoking in medical. He’ll smell more like himself now, the burn and salt of him, less like something soft and clean, like medical, like his navigator. Wisps of smoke curl between us, and he waves them aside with a flapped kind of gesture, less controlled that he would like.

So much heat in his glare, the way he just looks at me. Expecting an explanation, knowing he isn’t going to get one, maybe looking me over like I’m looking him over. Longest we’d been without seeing each other since that day he pulled me from a broken clutter, gave me a name, gave me kindness in the form of his snarling bark, just a skinny pup.

Finally he looks away, frowning at some distance point. Brings in a long drag, lets it out slow, creating a hazy cloud. Says, “What are you doing, myshonok?”

Quietly. So quiet, like he’s not even actually talking to me. Still frowning at nothing. Not full of pride now. Just a skinny pup.A goddamn recruit.

I swallow, get closer to him. I set my hand on his arm, just a whispering touch because I can’t give him my whispering voice. I curl my fingers into the sleeve of his jacket, plucking at him, clutching at him. I feel stiff bandaging beneath my hand, swaddled white over the lurid burns from being trapped in the Reliant’s inferno. I swallow again, chest tight, throat sore, eyes sharp.

He looks at me, sneering, triumphant now that I’ve shown him my weakness, rolled over on to my back for him, fallen back into orbit around him. “HeardPraxis has been fucking you,” he says.

Daring me to contradict him, maybe begging me to deny it, looking at me like he’s never seen me before. I want so desperately to be what he wants to see, but then maybe I’m angry at him for saying it like that, calling it something less than it is. There’s a burning itch across my face, flustered heat making me drop my eyes away from his stare. I look at the floor.

“Well?” he demands. “Is he fucking you?”

It hurts to nod, but I do it anyway.

“Son of a bitch,” he declares. Matter of fact about it, each syllable distinct and well formed, like he isn’t surprised. He’s seen me be a stupid slutty mouse too many times. I hear him puff at the cigarette, quick and furious.

His hand falls on my shoulder, the burning ember of the cigarette close enough that I can feel its heat. It’s almost affectionate, cautious, the way he touches at my neck, because he knows I don’t like, because he knows it makes me nervous to have him do it, to have him feel the ugliest part of me, my shattered voice. He pulls his hand away and then jabs at my side, near the scar, so near that I flinch, cringe, curl my shoulders up but don’t dare step away, not when he’s let me get so close.

“What the hell are you doing, kiddo? That bastard cut you up, remember? You nearly fucking died. That’s like if I went and found some Colteron spook to suck my dick.” More puffs, even quicker, so I dare to look at him, watch the cherry glow, the way his dark glare shimmers with the flare and coils of smoke.

“He’s not beating you, is he?” Sharp, demanding, so that I have to respond, have to shake my head. He grumbles about it, wordless displeasure. “Guess I can think of worse cocksuckers to bend over for, if you’re having to whore yourself around again. You’re such a mess, myshonok. This’ll teach me to get blown up. I thought Abel going to pieces was bad enough, but look at you.”

He heaves a smoky sigh, drops the cigarette even though he’s still got a bit left. I watch it fall. Keeping staring at it, ears burning, face hot. Twisted up inside and hating it.

He sets his hand on me again, gentle with it, shaking my shoulder some. “Hey. Seriously. Get your shit together, Deimos. I didn’t fucking die, okay? You know I wouldn’t do that to you. I said we’d get out of this mess together, didn’t I?”

Years ago, when we were just two stupid recruits, drinking on leave and howling at the moon, stumbling drunk and scared. Fell against each other in an alley, laughing about it, because I hadn’t lost my voice, because I could laugh and howl at the moon with him like we were two wolves, like we weren’t scared shitless about our orders and drunk with false bravado.

And I was drunk, he was drunker, falling all over each other in an alley, getting my thigh up against his crotch and feeling him hard, so we stumbled the rest of the way back to the barracks, fell into the skinny bunk, jerked each other until we ruined the sheets, lay breathless afterward, so fucking close together. Slurred it at me, drunk, promised me we’d always be together, wouldn’t ship out and get killed, told me he’d be with me forever. Fell asleep like that, tangled into me, breath against my cheek, so my heart grew heavy and I knew all the way down how I felt. Waited too long to tell him, or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, so maybe I’ll never know why but always wonder. 

That was then and this is now, and I look up at him, something terrible on my face because it makes his brow twist into a scowl, makes him awkward because I’m looking at him with something on my face I can’t stop, that I can’t help feeling.

He huffs about it, angry I’m making him keep talking like this. “I mean it.  You can stop fucking around now. Stop doing that to yourself. You know I hate it. And with him especially. Come to me if you have to. I’ll slap you around or something, if you need it. Just. Not him.”

I stare at him more. Everything’s crashing around in my head so loud that I can’t think, can barely hear him. It’s chaotic and noisy, dizzy inducing, I’m so lightheaded that maybe I’ve gone delirious, started to hallucinate from hunger, gotten myself so wound up that I’ve cracked.

It’s my ugly rasp, leaving me like I don’t even own it anymore, saying whatever the fuck it wants. “Not like that.”

“Not like what?” Harsh and angry, because he doesn’t want me to talk back, doesn’t want to hear excuses. Just wants to have me nod, be timid about it, stick close to his side and avoid a scarred-up lion, a fighter who he hates for being sweet on his navigator.

I struggle with the words, have to lick my lips and swallow. He’s wary of me, leaning back when I lean forward, but then he relents and lets me press my lips into his hair, get my mouth near his ear. Try to whisper it but can’t, too scared, have to back away again. I lower my head to let my bangs fall into my face, trying to hide from him.

“What, myshonok? Spit it out.”

Everything shivers with how hard my heart beats. I can’t feel the ground beneath me. Chest so tight I have to force my lungs to pump. Manage to say, “Not just fucking,”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Like maybe he knows, like maybe he got told it already and figured it wouldn’t be true, figured I was just some slut looking to get filled so I could calm down about him being laid up in medical. And I hate him for being right, for knowing me so well, for knowing me better than anyone, and I hate myself for trying to think like that because I know it’s not true. Everything’s just alarm bells and sirens, so I think maybe I ought to go jump in my ship, shoot off into space, get shot down, spin out of control, burn a hanger bay just to make this simple again.

I rub the back of my hand at my forehead, dizzy again. I’ve forgotten to breathe. Swallow even though my mouth’s dry like a desert, endless sand dunes, something I’ve never seen except on the vids. Try to say it one way and nearly choke, have to be a coward and say, “Like him.”

“You _what_?”

I shiver, because he says it so darkly, so dangerously, so it’s like I’m pushing at him, pushing too hard, and he’s going to push back, push me down, teach me that I’m his. And it’s delicious and terrifying, so I think I might scream if he tries. This is something of a nightmare, forcing myself to keep talking even though it hurts, my throat’s on fire, I’m burning with shame. “With Praxis because I like him. Not just – not just fucking.”

“Aleks,” he says. Stern, like he’s older than me, like he didn’t lie on his recruitment paperwork, like he’s always acted because he’s the one who pulled me out of the broken clutter and started taking care of me, made me his so he’d be mine, so we could both feel like we belonged to someone, didn’t realize how far I’d taken it until I told him I loved him, until he realized he didn’t love me, or maybe he did and just didn’t want a used up slut like me, or maybe I’ll never know anything, because I’m such a dumb mouse, grey and little, worthless.

I cringe about it, hunch my shoulders like maybe he’s going to start smacking me around.

“Aleks, goddammit.” Now he’s angry about it, angry that I’d do this to him, make things awkward when he tried to make them simple again. Tried to make me feel better and made things worse, maybe thinking about what he said and what he got told and how fucking awkward the whole thing is for him now. So he’s mad at me, mad that I’d do this to him when he thought I’d be his forever, just like he made me. His mouse, his like he named me.

“You don’t know what you want,” he says. Hissing the words at me, fast and anxious, convincing himself at the same time. “You’ve never known what you want. You always think you want what’s worst, like that’s what you deserve. Goddammit. You’re just – Aleks, look at me. Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I look up at him, meet his gaze, because Sacha’s asking, and I can never deny him.

He searches my face, dark eyes serious, brows apart so he doesn’t look angry, looks concerned, a skinny anxious pup. He’s into the wall with such desperation, trying to look tough. His eyes break for a moment, look somewhere over my shoulder, then flick to me and stay there. So intense with the way he pushes off from the wall, leans toward me. “Aleks, do you trust me?”

Forever and always, of course, even into the inferno of a burning ship, even into the depths of sorrow, I’ll always be his in the way that counts, in a way that crashes through my thoughts like alarm bells and sirens, out of control with the way he’s looking at me. I’m terrified of him, of myself, of what’s between us that I can’t define anymore, of what I feel for him if it isn’t love, if isn’t like how I feel for my fighter, the one who is gentle, the one who makes me feel safe. I bite my lip until it tastes like pennies, and nod.

His hand goes into my hair, fingers curling through the back where it’s shortest, scratching at my neck. He bends me to him, crushes me against him, kisses me like never and so it’s a moment of insanity, something unhinged, my heart fluttering, everything unreal so I think I might be dreaming. It’s like nothing, like everything, his lips moving against mine, the heat and wet of his tongue, the pressing invasion and possession of it, so I’m the one weak-kneed, I’m the one shaking, the blistering disconnect where I forget everything and clutch at him, tip into him, submit entirely because I don’t know what else to do.

All these small sounds from my throat, from deep within the ache of me, so I’m breaking all over again and it’s alarm bells and sirens clanging through my brain. It’s entire too late when I think about what’s happening, about why this shouldn’t be happening, about why I have to stop this. It’s fumbling, drowning even though I’ve never seen water deeper than a bathtub, trying to swim even though I don’t know how, trying to figure out where he ends and I begin so I can get away, so I can end this.

“Pah!” Just breathless and weak, pushing at his shoulders, getting us separated. He’s looking over my shoulder again, grinning about it, perfectly the mad dog again and I know why when more things become real, when sound registers through the sirens, when I realize it’s been a fighter’s boots against the flooring.

I know without turning around, know exactly what’s happened, the way it looks with how I’ve melted into him, with how he has a hand against the back of my neck, his other arm locked around my waist, pulling me to him, me being willing. A fucking disaster because he wants me to trust him, thinks he’s knows better, thinks that I can’t make my own decisions, that I need him because I want him.

“Uunhn!” I shove at him, push him away from me, frantic with the gesture, desperate to turn my head and look even though I know what I have to be seeing, knowing exactly whose long-legged stride is disappearing down the corridor.

“Deimos,” he says. Snatches at me, trying to keep me to him, trying to own me forever so the line between belonging and possessing is blurred, because he thinks he knows what’s best, because I trust him with my life, because I’ve given myself to him a thousand times over. “Deimos, don’t.”

He can’t tell me what to do, who to be with, he can’t act like he owns me and then turn around and fuck his navigator, get wet-eyed and docile about it, tell his navigator that he loves him even though it’s just a little mouse that he’s talking to. It isn’t fair.

I push at him more, break free of him, stumble aside and work my throat into a swallow. Back away from him, feeling the wide-open pull of my eyes, the unsteady tilt in my step. Say to him, rasp at him with all my strength so it’s loud, so it hurts, “Don’t want you!”

He stares at me, unable to comprehend, still thinking I’m just some stupid slutty mouse, some goddammit recruit, something he’s responsible for and maybe doesn’t want to be, maybe needs to be. “Deimos—“

“No!” Scrunch my eyes shut, yell it at him, conscious of the fact I can’t hear the fighter’s boots against the floor anymore, aware that he had to have seen us, knowing that he must have come looking for me because he wants to keep me safe, because he cares for me, because he loves me and tell me all the time, shows me all the time with every gentle touch and kindness. I put my fists against my temples, hunch over the word and say it again, even louder, “NO!”

Makes him flabbergasted, not even angry about it, just staring at me, like he can’t imagine I would reject him like this, like I’m always and forever his to use, to claim, to keep close but never as close as I want. And I love him for it, hate him for it, twisted up inside and confused, so all I can focus on is the present, is what really matters, is the vacant sound of a fighter’s boots against the floor.

“Deimos, he’s—“

“No!” I hit at him, strike back for the first time ever, push him like I mean it until he lets me go, until I’m free of him. “No!” Tell him again, not even sure what I mean, turn away and just start running, boots loud against the floor, not a mouse anymore but maybe some bigger beast, hurrying because he can’t, because he’s bandages and disaster, weak against the wall whereas I’m eager, urgent, flying down the corridor all the way to the lift.

He’s not there, not anywhere, so I have to find him. Have to go looking. Go up a level, lean against the buzzer until the little cream-colored lamb answers, sweet smile vanishing into concern at the sight of me. He’s not there either, makes us both a little panicked, because the lamb can’t sleep unless he’s got a fighter in the room with him, something dangerous to handle the darkness in his dreams. I have to shake my head at him, run away again, take the lift all the way down to the fighters’ base.

I think surely he’ll be in the storage room, in the place we’ve made our own, the empty section of the ship that no one else uses. He isn’t. It’s just the crates and our blanket shoved aside, almost hidden. I sit on one of the crates, wait forever, wait until it’s late into the evening, until I’m so turned around into knots and terrified, dizzy with hunger, tired, weak-kneed and shaking as I ride the lift up through the levels.

He isn’t in the room. Just the navigator, doubly anxious since I’ve come around a second time looking for his fighter, looking for the lazy lion of the plains who lays down with the lamb, gentle, kind, my fighter, the one I want so desperately. The one who needs to hear my voice, needs to hear me explain everything, needs to have heard the fucking conversation rather than just walk up at the wrong fucking moment.

I turn to leave, frustrated, wondering where else I can look for him. The round-faced navigator catches my hand, pleads at me without actually begging, says, “You can stay here. You can wait for him. He always comes back now. He knows I – he’ll be back.”

Because all the lights are on in the room, because it’s so late in the night, because he had to get spread for the slaughter when we took down the wolf. I nod at him, let him know I’ll be back, hurry up to my room and back with the half-drunk bottle of contraband as my prize.

We sit on his top bunk, the fighter’s bottom bunk left empty because we both expect him back at any moment. The bottle passes back and forth, doesn’t take much since I’ve got nothing in me but nerves and he’s entirely too soft, such a little lamb, just bleating at me with idle talk until he’s made sleepy with it, until he gets the blanket around himself. Hugs his pillow, rolls into the wall, so I’m on the top bunk with all the lights on, tipsy-drunk and bleary, nauseated, hardly anything missing from the bottle because we were both so anxious it takes nothing.

Leave the lights on, think he’ll come back at any moment, lay down and stare at the door, vision blurring either because I've been drinking or because I’m about to cry, the little navigator at my back and rolled against the wall, the taste of the mad dog still on my lips, smoke and salt, burn and heartache, something terrible because I trusted him, because he wants to save me, because he thinks I need saving, because I don’t know what I’m doing, and then I don’t have to think anymore. 


	17. Part Two, Chapter Nine

A hand against my face and a voice in my ear, whispering at me, the words senseless and empty because I’m dreaming them. Half a face with the rest in shadow, warm lips on my cheek, something so kind and gentle it’s impossible, it can’t be a dream. I have to wake up, lift my head, wonder why I feel so weak and dizzy, hot-heavy and sick. Drunk, I’m drunk, curled on the top bunk with a fluff of white lamb lumped up behind me.

And he’s there, the fighter, standing in front of the bunks so he can see me in the gloom and shadow of the room, the bathroom light turned all the way down so it’s dark without being pitch black. When I stir upright his hand pulls away, he grips the edge of the bunk instead.

We just stare at each other, because I’m still not convinced this is real, because my liquor-addled brain is telling  me to feel guilty and scared, deeply ashamed, making me a meek and quiet mouse trapped beneath the lion’s wounded pride. I can’t see enough of his expression to tell what he’s thinking, but I know what has to be on his mind. I can still taste the mad dog on my lips, the bitterness of smoke and old dreams.

I start to scoot toward the ladder, wanting him, needing to explain, desperate to get him in the light so I can plead at him without words, supplicate myself before him. I need to see if he still loves me, if he still looks at me with kindness, if he can look at me and not see a slut, some cheap whore, something full of broken promises who goes around kissing dogs.

He sets a hand on me, gentle, stopping me. “Just go back to sleep,” he says. Quiet, hushing, flat about it so I know he’s upset, know he’s having to force himself to sound calm, to sound gentle.

I shake my head, crawl over to the end of the bunk. I hear him sigh, so it makes me doubly nervous. I’m a bit unsteady on the ladder, confused enough by it that he notices, that he helps me down. Pulls me to him so I can’t stumble, so he leans over me and asks, “Are you drunk?”

I have to nod, let him know he’s right, that the little lamb and the small mouse passed a bottle back and forth because we got scared of shadows, some real, some imagined. The navigator knew I was upset without being told why, knew I was waiting to have a fight. Made him nervous but there was nothing to do except keep me company, drink a little so we could both sleep.

He sighs again. “You make it so hard to be in love with you,” he says.

Still so quiet about it, sounding so calm even though he’s tense. The words crash into me, shatter everything, make me clutch at him in a way that’s giddy, clinging at him because I’m terrified he’ll push me away. He doesn’t. He lets me grab hold of him, lets me follow after him, lets me into the bottom bunk with him.

It’s such a narrow space we have to be close together, but I want us to be closer still.  He’s on his back, so I press against his side, put my thigh over his hips, drape my arm over his chest, nuzzle the top of my head into his shoulder. He moves his arm, brings it between us, so I think maybe he’s going to put that arm around me, hold me so I can feel safe, so I know everything’s okay. I’m so warm all over, flushed from drinking, but cold with fear all the same, so I feel like shivering even though I don’t, I keep still, wait for him to put his arm around me.

He pushes me off him instead, rolls on his side with the same motion. Puts his back to me and faces the wall.

I rise up on my elbow and lean over him, wanting to see his face, wanting to plead at him with mine. He’s got the whole side of his face into the pillow, leaving me the scarred socket, so I have to try to lean further, pluck at him anxiously. He needs to shift his face toward me, not turn away from me like he’s doing, hiding from me.

He’s so tense. I can feel how tense he is. He needs to know I didn’t want it, didn’t want the kiss that he saw, but I’m not sure I can tell him and not have it sound like a lie, not have it be a lie. I’m so mixed up inside, so tangled, confused and hurting so I just want him to hold me, make me feel safe, tell me he loves me even though I’ve hurt him, even though I make it hard to love me.

I dip my head over his, kiss his brow, rub my cheek into his, beg him without words to turn back around and hold me.

He shoves at me with his shoulder, knocks me away with his elbow. Makes it clear I’m not wanted. “You smell like smoke,” he says. Finally sounding angry, not so calm anymore.

I smell like a dog, is what he means. I pull away from him, get as far as I can within the narrow confines. It isn’t very far. I pull away more, sit on the edge of the bunk and set my head across my knees, dizzy and sick, miserable. I’ve got nothing in me but nerves and cheap gin, maybe vodka, it’s so hard to tell sometimes, the clear bottles of clear burning liquid. Not even tears left in me, because I could cry, could sob and sob but I don’t.

I get up, let the room lurch sideways for a moment. I think maybe he’ll ask where I’m going, but he doesn’t. He’d let me leave right now, probably wants me to, he’s just too nice to kick me out of the room entirely, too disgusted with me to even bother dragging me to my own room.

I go into the bathroom, drink water straight from the faucet until I feel full of something besides nerves, until I almost puke because it’s too much. I take off my top, leave it on the floor in the corner.  I bend over the sink again, cup water through my hands. I wash my face, scrub hard with soap lather and then hot water, scrub until it stings, scrub until maybe I’m clean, maybe I won’t smell like smoke anymore.

He’s still facing the wall, as far against it as he can, leaving me half the bunk because he’s too nice. I’m not sure if he’s fallen asleep already, so I try to be quiet, try not to brush against him. I turn the other way, put my back to him, just a sliver of space between us because it’s a terribly narrow bed and normally that makes us have to overlap and tangle.

My face is hot, so it feels strange the way my eyelashes are wet, my eyebrows wet and cooling into the air, the fringe of my bangs as well, damp and drying. I look out at the room, at the gloom of shadows, think maybe I’ll start crying but don’t. 

 

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Tomoscloud made an[ illustration edit](http://tomoscloud.tumblr.com/post/48632321988/so-i-made-another-thing) for this chapter!


	18. Part Two, Chapter Ten

The morning is so painfully awkward that we make the navigator cry.

It’s the three of us moving around getting ready in moody silence. We’ve had a lot of mornings together, lots of nights where I’ve stayed over, but the fighter won’t talk to me, won’t look at me, so obviously angry and unable to handle me, to be anywhere near me. I only try a few times to touch him, but each rejection is sharper and harsher until finally he snaps at me, makes even more obvious that something’s wrong, the lion showing his teeth to a scared little mouse.

The shower’s running, the fighter taking his turn last, always so noble about being the one to end up with lukewarm water and then probably something cold, his hair is always cold afterward, his lips cool to the touch when we kiss goodbye, just before we leave the room. Most days, that is, not this morning, not when he won’t even look at me.

The navigator starts soft with it, not wanting me to hear, so I don’t even realize until I see him just standing next to the bunk, one boot on, the other clutched against his chest. He’s hugging his fucking boot and crying about it because the situation is so tense and terrible, his fighter is so tense and terrible.

I don’t know what to do about the navigator, the weeping little lamb. He’s already starting to calm down, shoulders shucking with quiet, muffled desperation. He rolls his shoulder into his cheek, brushing himself dry. He fumbles at the boot, maybe realizing it’s not such a great thing to hug, probably getting his milk-white jacket dusty.

I get up next to him, forget to make noise about it so I startle him. I nudge his shoulder with my elbow and don’t say anything, not sure what the hell to do.

“Oh,” he says. Jams his foot into the boot, wipes quickly at his face, tries to look like it’s nothing. Can’t look at me, has to just kind of hang his head until I nudge him again, harder, making his little body sway.

“It’s nothing,” he says quickly. Like I’m going to get mad at him for crying when I’m the one who made him blubber in the first place.

I puff a breath at him, grab his stupid little hand, start pulling him toward the door.

“Wait,” he says. “I need my—“

I let him go, let him grab his tablet and fiddle with the screens, all the numbers and charts that say we’re heading further out of Colteron space, heading toward home, wherever the fuck home means. He glances to the bathroom door, to the rushing sound of water, and then follows me out into the hall.

He looks nervous about it just being the two of us, about bailing on his fighter like this. I don’t want him to balk, so I grab his hand again and start dragging him until he resists, pulls his hand free, walks beside me. I take him up a level, to my room, peeking in first to make sure my navigator’s already gone.

“Deimos?” The lamb bleats at me, not sure of why I’ve brought him here. He clutches at his tablet, hugging it to his chest like he did with the stupid boot. He better not start crying again.

I stare at him, wait for him to say something besides my task name.

He stares back at me, until I realize he’s waiting for the exact same thing, waiting for me to tell him what’s wrong. Makes me frown, because I’m not sure why I thought he’d be the one to start talking, why I thought he’d have anything to say.

He must realize the difficulty, realize that I don’t want to say anything because I never do, I always hold to my silence as long as possible. He asks timidly, “Did you have a fight with Praxis?”

The answer is obvious, but I don’t snip at him for it. I just nod, slowly.

His brow comes together, round-eyes full of sympathy, so much that I must look beaten, must be showing all my misery too plainly. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. And then looks embarrassed about it, maybe realizing what he’s said, about how I don’t really talk. He starts to stammer, nervous, fidgety, almost scared of me because he’s made a mistake, thinks I’m going to get mad at him for it. “I mean, that is, you just seem so sad, and, I didn’t think you had anyone else—“

I touch his arm, just light enough to get his attention, make him stop rambling. Nod at him, gesture for him to stay there. I go to the bed, pull the edge of my blanket until the pillow slides free. I hand it to the lamb, take my navigator’s for myself, get us both seated on the floor with the pillows for cushion against the hard floor.

“Oh,” he says. He’s got his knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped loosely over them. “Um, so. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop last might, but. Praxis woke me up when he came in.”

The lamb is just as good at feigning sleep as I always suspected. I shrug at him, let him know it’s okay, keep my shoulders hunched because I know what he would have heard. About how it’s hard to love me.

“Oh. I don’t mean – Deimos, I meant, the first thing he said to you.”

I frown at him, shake my head slightly.

“When he woke you up?” Now the lamb looks confused, rapidly starting to get flustered. “I guess you were still sleeping.”

And then the motherfucker doesn’t say anything, doesn’t explain, just bites him lip and looks nervous. I poke at him with my boot, kick his feet, so impatient that it makes his mouth twist, almost smiling but in a way that’s ruined by the pinch of his teeth.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I guess it’s only fair. He came over to the bunk, right? I could feel his weight against it, so I guess he must have leaned in to look at you. And, I’m pretty sure I heard him right, he said, oh – don’t get mad, Deimos, I really wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. He said, ‘at least you wouldn’t have been able to kiss a ghost.’” 

He leans toward me. “Deimos? Look, really, I’m not trying to pry. Just, if you want to talk about Cain you can.”

I must look startled, must show all my shock across my face, because he says, quickly. “That’s who Praxis saw you kissing, right? Isn’t that what happened?”

He’s so quick about it, timid, flinching back like I might throw something at him, might hit him. Honestly I’m more surprised he’s figured it out than anything else, or maybe terrified that I’m so fucking slutty that even a sweet little lamb knows it, knows what a worthless stupid whore I’ve been, how I’ll throw myself at anyone with a harsh growl who shows me the slightest bit of kindness.

“Oh, no, Deimos – I’m sorry,” he says. He shifts around, gets where he can pat at my calf, nervous and fluttery so it makes me feel jittery just to look at him. “You’ve just been so worried ever since Cain got hurt, and you and Praxis keep fighting about it. You’ve always sat with Cain at meals, even after you and Praxis got together, because you’re friends with him, right?”

I nod, because it seems safe, but the answer’s so complicated, everything is so complicated, that I’m desperate to make him stop talking, stop making everything sound so simple and sweet in his little lamb bleating. Have to say it instead, rasp it at him, tell him, “Knew Cain before.”

“Before Praxis?” His mouth flexes around, trying to frown but looking scared still, timid because he thinks he’s upsetting me with assumptions. “Oh, before joining Fleet?”

“As recruits,” I say.

He moves closer now that I’ve started talking, gets right up next to me so my whisper can reach him. “Did you kiss him? Is that why Praxis is mad?”

Now I’m the one with my knees drawn up, pinning my arms to my chest, burying my face because my voice isn’t my own anymore, easier to whisper into the fabric of my pants than look at his round, worried face and round, worried eyes. “Yes.”

“Oh,” he says. Like it’s still a surprise even though he guessed correctly, probably knew all along, isn’t stupid because he’s a navigator, they’re smart like that, he’s sharp and dangerous without knowing it, steel under all that fluff and sweetness. He pats my back slightly, cheering at me. “Deimos, you just have to tell Praxis that you’re sorry. I’m sure you didn’t – I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”

I could hit him for how sweet he’s being, how innocent he’s making everything seem. It makes me angry, makes me rude. I hunch my shoulders away from his coddling hand. Snap it at him, rough-edged and mean. “Fucked Cain, too.”

“Oh.” Squeaking it, like he’s a mouse as well. And he doesn’t have anything else to say.

He wants to see the good in this, make it just some silly disagreement when he knows it isn’t, when things were so tense and terrible, painfully awkward, that it made him cry. He’s such a fucking lamb, a sweet, stupid, round-faced little thing with all that sympathy, and now I can’t stop thinking about what the wolf did to him, about how I had to watch it, about how he ought to hate me for it, ought to push me away because I know too much, know all the worst of him, but he never does and never has.

I lift my head to look at him, see that he’s biting his lip again and looking so miserable about this, all that stupid sympathy. We’re close together since I’ve been talking, since he wants to hear my ugly rasp.

I tip into him, nudge at him, set my head into his shoulder. “Sorry. Was rude.”

“Oh,” he says. He puts an arm around me, pulls me to his side, sweet like fucking sugar. “It’s okay, Deimos.”

“Knows I fucked Cain. While ago. Didn’t want it anyway. He’s not mad about that. Mad because. I —“ Swallow, almost choking, have to straighten in a hurry, startling the little navigator. Can’t breathe for a moment, so I wonder if I pushed too hard, said too much. My chest is tight, my heart’s racing, and it’s fear, it’s panic, I’m being stupid about it, getting worked up over nothing, I’m fine, nothing’s wrong with me.

He’s got round eyes watching me, blown open anxiousness. “Deimos?”

I shake my head at him, figure out how to start breathing again. I go get a drink of water, come back still holding the glass.

He’s waiting for me, watching me, nervous but not trying to seem like it. He settles on trying to seem casual. Asks, “You okay?”

I nod, drink more water, shape my face around so maybe I’m smiling, but he still looks worried so I stop, drink meekly, wait until I think it really is okay. Say to him, “Told him I love Cain.”

“Oh,” he says.

It’s such a funny way for him to say it, makes me smile down at the glass of water. I guess he’s not a fan of junkyard brawlers, of fighters who act like it, rather than a gentle lion and a little grey mouse. I remember the wolf, the one who beat all that sympathy into him, how he’s just a little lamb, put out for the slaughter and somehow still alive. It’s a sobering thought, makes me stop smiling. Makes me feel sad about it, guilty, never told him how he’s brave since I’m not, I’m a coward.

“Do you?” he asks.

I look up at him, uncomprehending, so I must have missed what else he said in between his _oh_ and this question.

“Are you in love with Cain?”

Getting rocked into the shelves of a cramped utility closet, watching the Reliant burn, hearing him make a rasping whisper from a white hospital bed, having him kiss me with a fighter’s footsteps growing near like a siren through the night. It’s a panicky feeling, tight like suffocating, something that slips out from my throat, some ruined little noise. My head goes side to side, my hair swaying over my face with the motion, my heart stuttering, everything tight like choking.

Say, “Not anymore.” And maybe not ever, maybe I’ve never understood what it means to love someone, maybe I still don’t, maybe I’m too hard to love so I’ll never understand it, but I need him to try like I want to try.

“Oh. Well. Did you tell Praxis that?”

I shrug. Think about it some,shake my head, slow, side to side with deliberate care. “Saw me kiss Cain. Wouldn’t believe me.”

“Oh.” And the saddest one yet, squeezed out with sympathy, makes him have to come hug me again. It catches me off guard, makes me drop the glass of water so it tips sideways and forms a puddle. We both have to scoot away from it, I have to get up and fetch a towel.

When I’ve gotten the water mopped up, he catches me again, holds on to my hand like I planned on going somewhere without him. “Deimos, do you like Praxis?”

He sounds stern, serious, not so much a little bleating lamb as showing his steel. At least he isn’t asking me to murder anyone this time. I shake my head at him. Offer it in an ugly voice that’s gone even uglier, hoarse and ragged, trembling. “Love him.”

It makes him smile, hopeful and scared for me, trying to make everything better because this morning was so awful for him, so tense and terrible it made him cry, he’s just got too much goddamn sympathy. He squeezes my hand, offers me another sad smile, round face broken into concern. “Did you want Cain to kiss you?”

I stare at him, really stare at him, realize he’s assuming something good about me, giving me the benefit of the doubt, open and trusting in a way I don’t really understand. I shake my head, lower my face and shrug my shoulders as well. Maybe I did, maybe I needed him to, maybe I needed to get angry and push at him, tell him no because I’d never denied him anything, I could never deny him anything.

It makes me so miserable that everything gets wet, blurry, my throat’s so thick it hurts, I swallow and it hurts. I don’t want to lose Sacha because he’s all I’ve had for so long, and maybe I do still love him after all because the idea of being something else besides his mouse is so painful, makes me feel so small. I love him and I don’t love him. I just don’t know what else there is if I don’t really love him. I don’t know why I can’t make up my mind about it. I just know it hurts.

He notices I’ve started to cry, the silent way I keep my head low and let the tears roll down my cheeks. It makes him say, “Oh.”

I turn my face into my shoulder, so now I’m the one trying to brush away my silly weeping and I haven’t even got a fucking boot to hug. I have a lamb instead, a fluffy stupid sweet cream-colored little lamb who pulls me into him and he’s soft, sweet, just my height so it’s strange and nice. No one’s ever hugged me without wanting to fuck me, except maybe Sacha, who ended up fucking me anyway. So I put my arms around him, startle him with it, lean into the hug until he leans back.

He pats my back, rubs a little circle, lets me cry on him for a bit. “Deimos,” he says quietly. Pats at me more, squeezes me. “Deimos, you just have to let Praxis know how you feel. He understands you don’t like to talk, but it’s so hard on him, you know? I’m sure if you just explain things it’ll be okay.”

He’s so naive, so earnest. It makes me believe him or at least want to believe him so desperately. I nod into him, pick my head up from his shoulderand collect the rest of my pieces as well. He lets me go, hastily, so we’re both a bit stupid about it, looking around and getting separated without going too far.

He says, “Deimos, you know that Praxis really cares about you, right? You’ll be able to work it out. You just have to tell him what you told me. And, um, maybe tell Cain, too. Tell him he – he—“ It makes him run out of steam, look too scared to continue, shaken by the idea because he’s got too much sympathy. He’s looking a little ashen, sympathy turning into fear, probably wondering what the hell I meant earlier by saying I didn’t want to get fucked but let it happen anyway.

I kind of scowl at him, shake my head. Don’t say anything because I don’t have to, he knows how I mean it now, I’m letting him know it’s fine, that I can’t explain it but don’t have to. I’m not scared of the mad dog’s bite. He’s just a dog, skinny pup. He isn’t a wolf.

“Deimos, if you want, I can talk to Praxis for you. We can do it together. I’ll be your voice.” It makes his cheeks flush over with embarrassment, maybe makes him realize how the offer sounds, how silly he’s being except neither of us laughs. It isn’t funny.

I hesitate first, really think it over, but ultimately have to shake my head.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me know if you change your mind. And I, um.” He looks at me sideways, embarrassed, flustered and ashamed for whatever he’s trying to say. It comes out of him quick, tangled, almost mumbling. “I know what it’s like to think you love someone but you don’t.”

I tip my head at him, work my brow, curious and concerned because he’s so twisted up about it, looking almost panicked.

He tries to reassure me with a smile but can’t hold the line of his mouth. It droops down, makes him look just as miserable as he must feel. “I thought I was in love with Logos. Before I – just, before.”

He might as well just have fucking punched me. I don’t even try to conceal my surprise, just can’t, just gape at him, mouth half open, horrified on his behalf, remembering the nightmare of the maintenance passages, all those terrible fucking noises, the warm, thick feel of the wolf’s blood on my hands, of later, the lamb sobbing beside me, asking me a tremulous question, the slippery slick feel of the wolf’s gored open throat – I throw my arms over the sweet fluffy lamb and hug all the fucking sweet and fluff out of him, squeeze until he can be steel again, until he has to toughen up and laugh about it.

“Deimos, I can’t breathe—“ Voice light, unburdened by the fleeting sorrow, happy to be suffocated by me, so he’s smiling when I pull away. Round eyes serious, soft and sympathetic, not feeling sorry for himself although I bet he wants to, bet he wouldn’t even know how.

Blurts out of me before I really think about it, in my dry whisper. “You’re so brave.”

Shocks him, makes him laugh in a way that’s disbelieving. “What?”

I don’t want to explain it, don’t want to remind him of what I’m sure he doesn’t need reminded of, just shrug so he knows it’s the truth, that I wouldn’t say it and not mean it.

He laughs again, breathless and nervous, says, “It’s not like that. I’m not – it’s nothing. I’m okay. I was just letting you know that I guess I kind of understand what you’re going through.”

So earnest about it, so sweet it makes my teeth hurt, so we’re both a bit awkward about it. I put the pillows back, because we need to hurry to breakfast if we plan to eat anything.

I remember just too late all the reason why I went to bed hungry, why my stomach still hurts from having not eating anything the day before. It makes me slow, drag my feet toward the mess hall, so the navigator looks back and frowns. He hurries ahead, peeks through the door, comes back and tells me, “Don’t worry, Deimos. He’s not in there.”

And I’m not sure which fighter he means, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ve reached a point of hunger where it doesn’t matter, reached a point of exhaustion that I don’t care if the mad dog is there. I don’t know what I’ll say to him, what more I could possibly say. I have to save up my words to use when it matters, before I lose what matters to me most, before I lose everything. 


	19. Part Two: Chapter Eleven

I’m not sure which of them started it, but it doesn’t fucking matter when I’ve got to be the one to end it. Been looking all day for one or the other, trying to get one alone and just as desperately avoid being alone with the other, and now it’s the alarm-pitched staccato beat of my fighter’s boots against the floor, the echoing hush of a navigator’s. He was the one to come find me, the little round-faced navigator, bursting into the sim room in a panic so that my navigator fussed and whined like we cared.

Find them right where he left them, some set aside stretch of passage with dingy lights and an open section of railing overlooking the level below. Two fighters snarling at each other, plenty of reasons to be angry, and it’s come to blows and broken apart again, tense and terrible.

“—such a goddamn two-faced liar.” The mad dog’s bark, breathless at the end, because he has no right to be exerting himself like this. He has to grip the railing, has to try and look like he isn’t, that he doesn’t need it to keep upright. Stubborn and furious, so full of pride it hurts, never wanting anyone to see how fragile he really is.

A lopsided dark gaze flicks over to see us racing into the middle of things. He’s bruised under the patch, something of insult being added to injury, a reddish mark that sends my heart into my throat. He tries to sound calm, all that hushed up refinement shaken by the force of his anger, restrained violence. He’s trying to loom over the dog, the lion being the bigger beast, something tense and terrible.

He says, “I could fill a black hole with how much you don’t know.”

“Tch.” The dog paws at the railing, like he’s going to try to push off it and come after the other fighter, pick some fight he’s sure as hell going to lose.

I get at him at last, almost fall into him, trying to stop my headlong rush by colliding mostly into the railing but partially into him. “Unnh!” Clutching at his jacket, frantic that he’s hurt himself, getting between him and the lion because I’m a fucking idiot.

Hard to miss the way his face crumples around the eye patch. Back stiff, so he’s even taller, trying not to show how I’ve hurt him. I think maybe that’ll be the end of it, that he’ll turn around and leave with his head held high, shunning me because I’m such a stupid fucking worthless piece of shit that I can’t stop hurting him, can’t stop smashing all the good he tries to give me.

The dog snips at me, shrugs his arm away from me without letting of the rail. “Get the fuck off me, Deimos.”

I shake my head, push at him. I want him to back down and leave first, he needs to leave first, he has to go back to his wet-eyed little navigator and lay down, get his dick sucked by that pretty scarred mouth if that’s what it takes to make him stop. He’s going to wear himself down into medical again, I can feel how he’s shaking, trembling because he shouldn’t even be on his feet, much less picking fights like this.

Now he hushes at me, sounding almost sweet about it, face turned into my ear so the others can’t hear him saying something nice. “Myshonok, lay off. I’m going to finish what you fucking started, okay?”

Nice for him, not nice like how the round-faced little navigator let me cry into his shoulder, not nice like a skinny pup cuddling into me in a skinny top bunk. I cringe, bow my head at him and hunch my shoulders, still holding on to his jacket because I’m so scared of this fight he’s trying to win, this terrible way he’s trying to fix me, the terrible way I can’t let him go.

From behind us comes a low spoken gentleness, slow and patient. “Aleks, come here.”

Like I’m a dog instead of a mouse, something he can call over, but it’s my name that he’s using so I have to turn, first my face and then my shoulders and then I let go entirely. I cross the little span between them, all that tense and terrible space. He has a hand out for me, not quite reaching, making me come to him. I press into his side. He’s warm, like how I imagine sunshine feels, the hot savannah sun beating down on all those lazy lions.

He put his arm around me. Holds me tight so my heart bursts, thumping against my ribs so hard he must feel it, so loud he must hear it.  I feel the lion’s rumbling growl, the low heat and threat of it, the way he seems so calm against the weight of the mad dog’s glare. He says, “Leave Aleks alone, Cain.”

“Fuck you. Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what to do. You need to turn around and walk away. Don’t look at Aleks, don’t talk to Aleks, don’t fucking touch Aleks. He’s mine, but I’m not going to put a scar on his mouth to prove it.”

There’s a glint of triumph in the dog’s fierce look, the smug way he shifts his weight and pulls himself off from the rail. Acting like he’s tough enough to keep fighting even though he’s not. Says, “You already put a fucking scar on him.“

From that fight we never actually had and everyone just thinks we did. I’m trapped between them, trapped against the warmth of the lion’s side, frozen and unable to move but just bouncing my attention between them, hating everything about how this is happening and I can’t stop it. No one ought to fight over a mouse, and they’re not, this isn’t really about me, they already hated each other. I’m just a convenient excuse, a match to toss on to the dry, snapped kindling, some prize to be pulled from the ashes.

The fighter at my side shifts, puts me under his arm so I’m huddled against his chest, face turned aside, able to watch everything but wishing I could hide instead. He says, “You’re such a bastard, Cain.”

He shrugs, so full of pride it hurts, refusing to be knocked down a peg by the harsh truth. He keeps at it, relentless. “It’s true. I never cut him open.”

Voice tight, fingers tight against my arm, pulling me closer. “You cut him open plenty, just never where it showed.”

The dog’s brows tighten, his lips pull back in a snarl. “You tried to kill him, you son of a bitch.” He comes off the rail, comes at us, stalking forward like the prowling junkyard dog that he is. He grabs my arm, tugs so that I think it might get ugly, but the lion only resists for a moment before letting me go, his one eye anxious, wanting to trust that I’ll come back to him.

He smells like smoke, acrid sweat from how he’s pushing himself. I lean away from him, unsure of what he wants, wide-eyed with how intense, how dark and dangerous he is. He runs his hand up my arm, slow, so it’s strange, slow, so I square my shoulders and try to lean away further, tense and taut like wire.

He puts his hand on the side of my neck, so I start to breathe through my nose, jaw clenched, realize what he’s doing a half second too late. His dark glare shifts over to the other fighter, ruthlessly proving his point with the way he grips my throat, just enough pressure to make me feel panicked, to make sure I start showing it.

“This is what you did to him,” he says. Spits the words, snarls them, a growling mad dog.  “He should have fish-hooked your stupid face just like the last guy who bruised up his neck so bad he can’t even fucking talk anymore. Ever think about that? Ever think about why he never fucking talks, or were you just too busy shoving your dick down his throat to care?”

Short, frantic breaths, waiting for him to tighten his grip to prove a point, powerless to stop him so I just start to whine about it, broken, desperate sounds.

“Stop it, Cain. Let him go.” Low and dangerous, slow but nothing gentle to it.

“Is this how he looked when you choked him? Fucking terrified, scared out of his mind because some bastard already got him down and strangled him near to fucking death? You big stupid son of a bitch, it’d been better if you’d just stuck to fucking him.”

I push at his wrists, whimper and whine, starting to shake because he’s holding my throat, letting out all my secrets, so dark and dangerous because I’m supposed to be his, he’s got to prove a point, my chest’s tight, I can’t breathe anymore so it really is like he’s strangling me, someone has to stop him, someone has to stop this, someone has to stop making that terrible noise, I can’t fucking breathe and yet all these small stupid sounds keep pouring out of me, a dog has me in his jaws, shaking me, my eyes are rolling back, I can’t breathe—

“Cain! Let him go!”

It’s a lot of pushing and shoving, not really anything I’m interested in, not until the pressure lifts from my throat and I can breathe again. Hands and knees pressed to the floor, arms shaking so bad it’s a wonder I’m even that much upright, making some horrible rasping wheeze, rushing air in and out of the tight constriction of my chest, the ruin of my throat. I forget where the fuck I am, what’s happened, so blown apart with panic because he knows me better than anyone, knows how to wreck me to prove a point.

“Stop it, stop it all of you!” And that’s a little fucking lamb’s frantic bleating, not the growling of the bigger beasts, but the soft fluff is all steel beneath and there are a navigator’s soft boots right up next to my arm. He’s gotten over to me, put himself into the middle of things.

“God, Cain, you’re so awful!” The navigator kneels down with an arm over my shoulders, not afraid of the dog because he’s fought a wolf already. “What did you do to him?” And then to me, someone finally talking to me rather than about me, so quiet like he doesn’t want the bigger beasts to hear the little lamb comforting a scared little mouse. “Deimos, you’re okay.”

“I didn’t hurt him. He’s fine,” sneers the dog. “And get your fucking hands off me, Praxis.”

“I ought to—“ Not so refined anymore, teeth together so it sounds painful, so he sounds just as raw and dangerous, ready to start brawling. I can tell by the scuffle of noise what happens, how he pushes the dog away, into the railing, so there’s a skid of boots, a clang of metal, and the snarling fury between them.

I keep my head down, watching the floor blur together, everything trembling and shaking because I am. It’s better without him on my throat, more like I can think straight and put thoughts together, starting to feel self-conscious about my reaction, about how everyone knows how to control me, how to get me to lose a fight fast.

The navigator keeps his hand on my back, like I need his protection, like maybe he can protect me from my own stupid self. He says, “Praxis didn’t hurt Deimos. He wouldn’t do that. You have it all wrong.”

“Ethos, shut up,” snaps his fighter. “Take Deimos and get out of here.”

But the navigator isn’t going to let himself get pushed around, not by a wolf, not by a dog, and certainly not by a lion. “No,” he says. Sounding perfectly calm about it. “It’s my fault anyway. The fighter I had before Praxis, he attacked me. Deimos saved me, that’s how he got hurt, but he killed the other fighter. Praxis told everyone that he did it so Deimos wouldn’t get in trouble, but it’s my fault. I’m the reason he got hurt in first place. It wasn’t Praxis – Praxis would never hurt Deimos like that.”

The same silly story he told his fighter, that night they had to carry a dying little mouse to medical. The rest of it, the fact it was all planned out, that’s not a secret he feels like the dog needs to know. It’s technically true, because I did try to save the lamb from the slaughter, the stupid little lamb who placed himself on the altar so willingly, made himself such a decadent target.

“Tch. Sounds like self-defense. Why lie about it? You’re a fucking idiot, Praxis. What if Deimos crapped out and died? They’d hang you for the lot of it because you’re such a fucking idiot.”

“If Deimos died, I wouldn’t care if they killed me too.” There’s the shift of his boots against the floor, and then the fighter joins his navigator on the floor, kneeling at my other side.

He’s gentle about it. Doesn’t know how to be anything else. He helps me to my feet, gets me steady even though I keep looking down, keep my face tipped down, because I don’t want to look at any of them and I hate the fact everyone’s talking about me, I hate being the goddamn center of attention like this.

There’s a flicking rasp, the hiss of flame to paper, and the sudden bite of smoke in the air. The dog’s given up fighting but doesn’t want to make it seem like a retreat, doesn’t want to slink away with his tail between his legs. I shift my gaze just enough to see he’s leaned back against the railing again, leaning so he doesn’t fall down, trying to look tough.

“Myshonok,” he snaps. Really biting on the harsh slurring syllables, snipping at me like it’s some secret. “ _Is that what happened?”_

I nod without lifting my face any further than I have to.  

And maybe he’s forgotten what happened in medical, when he got all mixed up on painkillers and muddled his languages, or maybe he knows and doesn’t care, maybe he’s doing it on purpose just to spite the little navigator for talking back to him. There’s the hush and blow of smoke, and then he asks, “ _Are you in fucking love with him, or just love fucking him?_ ”

I look up at him. Snap my gaze up from the floor and right over to him. He’s steady about it, smug and full of pride, but his brows are twitched together, he’s trying too hard to look like he doesn’t care. The same kind of look he wore around in medical, watching me lay in a bright white bed with a face full of tubing. The same kind of look he wore when I staggered into the infirmary at the base, just a stupid recruit, whistling and wheezing from the dark-collared ruin of my throat, bloodstained and shaken. A look that says I’m something to him after all, everything in a way that matters.

And I love him for it, love that he’s trying so desperately to keep hold of me because I don’t want to let go of him either. Know that I’ll probably always love him, but that I’m not in love with him. It’s such a stupid thing to realize but maybe not so stupid after all because I’d never known there could be a difference.

I smile at him. Center of fucking attention, that smile, so my insides are shaking even if I try to seem calm on the outside. I step toward him, get right up on him, so he leans back and can’t lean anymore without looking like it’s intentional. He’s got the rail at his back, starting to glare because he doesn’t know what else to do, maybe doesn’t like the soft shape of my smile.

I have to tip forward, one hand against the rail to keep my balance. I press my lips to his cheek, to the soft crest of it, kiss his dusk-dark bastard skin, same dusty hue as my own, just as thoroughly colonial and rough as me. He smells like smoke and sweat, salt and burn, same as always. He doesn’t push me away, just stares at me, everyone fucking staring at me, but I look right at him and make sure he’s looking right back at me.

“ _Yes_ ,” I say. Plain and simple, words like from my childhood, the harsh sound of them maybe a little less ugly in my rasping voice. “ _I love him_.”

I step away, turn away, put my back to him because I’m not afraid of his bite. I nudge at the bewildered little lamb, push at the big flustered lion as well, make them both start walking.

“Hey.” We haven’t gone far, so his voice carries easily. He either can’t get off the railing to come after me or doesn’t want to, wants to make me jump at the sound of his bark. Except, he sounds soft about it, just calling after me, just a skinny pup. “Myshonok.”

I stop, turn my head without actually looking at him, so he knows I’m listening. He doesn’t say anything more, so I have to search him out, go over to him. I glance back at the fighter and the navigator, my lion and the lamb, but they stay right where I left them.

He motions at me, makes me get right up close. I try not to look as wary as I feel, and he tries not to look as offended by that as he feels. He glares instead, hating at me for making it awkward, so I have to stifle a smile because I’ve gone silly and lightweight, strangely floating, tipsy without being drunk. It’s such an odd, giddy feeling.

He speaks softly, quietly, obviously not wanting them to overhear us.  “We’ll still get out of this mess like I said we would, right?”

I look through my bangs at him, peeping up from the downward tilt of my face. Nod eagerly, because I won’t leave him, don’t want him to leave me, even if he’s awful like the little lamb accused. I’m awful just the same, so I don’t mind.

He reaches out, brushes at my side over the scar. It’s unnerving how he’s able to, find it through my clothes, like he’s got me memorized just the same as I’ve got him. “You better not be fucking lying about this.”

I shake my head, quick about it, so he frowns because he believes me, frowns because he wants to beat someone for it when I already went and killed the bastard.

He doesn’t say anything for a while, just stares at me. Finally turns his head aside, scoffing, so fucking full of pride it hurts. Asks, “Does it have to be him?”

Sulky like a little kid about it, so I realize he’s trying to make me laugh. I don’t, not trusting my ugly breathless rasp not to ruin everything. I hunch my shoulders, nod quickly, embarrassed about it.

“Tch,” he says. Flicks his cigarette over the rail, hopefully it doesn’t land on someone, I’ve gone stupid from all this weird bubbly floating. “You’re a mess, kiddo. Get out of here before that fucking Cyclops makes up his mind about kicking my ass.”

I look over my shoulder, smile when I see how the fighter and the navigator are whispering just the same as we are, one of them maybe having to talk the other out of a rash decision. They both look so anxious and guilty when they see me staring that it’s hard to say who’s being the reckless one and who’s being calm.

I nod, but he catches my hand again before I can leave. He says, “Myshonok. You’re like a little brother to me. You know that, right?”

Even though he lied on his recruitment paperwork, but he’s always acted older until it felt like it, always looked out for me when no one else would, acted nice about it even though he’s just a snarling junkyard dog.

I look at him, but he’s back to scowling, back to looking mean and tough. He snaps his hand away, glares at me, dares me to say one fucking word about how nice he just sounded. Says, “Shut the fuck up,” even though I’m not the one saying too much. I wonder what kind of painkillers they’ve given him to be up and snarling when he’s suppose to be a skinny pup in a skinny white bed, some wounded fighter wrapped up in bandages.

“Tell Praxis I’ll cut his other eye out,” he says. Not much more to the threat than that, he’s already acted too nice to say, _if he hurts you,_ or something protective like that, something growling and mean, dangerous like he is, delicious with threat.

I nod, spin away and he lets me, doesn't grab me back or call for me this time. I scurry away, a skittering little mouse, tucking myself up against the sunshine heat of the open plains. I get the fighter’s hand in both of mine, wrap my cold little fingers into his warmth. He lets me, doesn’t say anything about it. I keep my head down, pressed so close against him that it’s almost hard to walk.

It’s just the three of us in the lift, my head down so I can’t see which level they’ve picked, where we’re going. I’m just right up against him, still got his hand held captive at least for a little while. I’m so nervous now, because neither of them are saying anything and they’re supposed to be the talkative ones, not me, I’m not going to say anything and they should know that.

And then the fighter pulls his hand away, squirms and flexes until I let go. I think maybe he won’t, that there’s no point in doing it when he’s not having to prove a point to a snarling dog. He does it anyway, he puts his arm around me, holds me. I feel his lips go into my hair, the way he kisses the top of my head. I’m glad my head’s down, so he can’t see me smile.

The doors to the lift open, and the navigator gets out on one the dormitory levels. “I’ll see you in a bit?” Asks it tentatively, honestly unsure of the answer.

I can feel the fighter nod, and his arm tightens over me like I’m just going to wander off without him now that the lift doors are open, like I’m not dying to stay right there with him as long as he’ll let me. The doors close again. There’s a pause, and then the lift starts to lower. 


	20. Part Two, Chapter Twelve

We’re sitting in the storage room in silence. He’s on a crate, I’m on a crate, maybe he’s looking at me but I’m looking at the floor, where the blanket sits in a neat pile like maybe we’ll use it, maybe we won’t. Pretty sure my ears are burning, pretty sure my whole body’s on fire, pretty sure I haven’t the faintest fucking clue what I’m doing because you could just take a picture and stick this under the dictionary for awkward as fuck.

I have to resist the urge to kick at the side of my crate, still giddy and silly with how light and floaty I feel, how weightless it feels it to have finally sorted out some of the tangle. I’m so afraid to look at him, though, thinking about the harsh rejection of his back the night before, the snapping heat in his voice that morning. I’m not sure he’ll even want what I’m willing to give, if there’s anything beautiful left for my ugly little rasp to take and shape into explanation.

Finally I lift my eyes, dare to look over at him. He’s looking so intently back at me, unflinching with it, so that I can’t help but lift my knees into my chest, curl over the thumping race of my heart. It bursts out of me, louder than usual, rough and scraping, shattered glass over rocks. “Sorry, didn’t – sorry, last night – wanted –“

Can’t say anything more, too tight and anxious to say anything more. I cringe tighter and hug my knees to my chest, completely fractured with how intensely I lack the words to explain myself, how twisted up and desperate I feel. I have so much that he needs to be told but none of the words to tell him, all my words broken, nothing but my ugly little rasp to give him.

“You don’t—“ He starts to say, and then pauses, like maybe he doesn’t have the words either, like maybe they’re something broken as well.

Silence between us again, everything so awkward. I hate how complicated this has to be, how the inferno of the Reliant is still between us, how nothing’s been the same since then even though it should, even though the ship is charred over, already begun to heal, the navigator and the fighter pulled from the ashes, I’ve been pulled from the ashes but still it’s so wrong, making me feel so scared. I bend into myself more, try to be as small as I can, not wanting to be noticed even though I’m the only thing in the room.

I’ve got my face pressed into my knees, knotted up with how anxious I feel. I just hear him, the shift of fabric and the change in the air. It’s nothing, just him sliding forward and bridging the space between us. It’s nothing, just his arms around me, just the tender way his lips brush my hair, how he kisses the top of my head. His voice, thick and choking, saying to me, “You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

It’s not as simple as that, but we both want so desperately for it to be true. He pulls me into him, holds me, strokes affection into my shoulders and down the rippling line of my spine. I have to try explaining things, explain everything like I promised I would, like I told the silly little navigator I would. I curl tighter, still just some tense and terrible lump for him to hug. Say, “Told Cain I – he knew you were there. Didn’t want him to. Wouldn’t have—“

“Deimos,” he says. Thick, tight, he’s the one who’s been strangled. His lips against my hair, my knees, whatever of me he can reach. Saying my task name because I told him I like it better, don’t like being some stupid sniveling boy or a goddamn new recruit, like being a fighter, something lean and dangerous, sharp with claws, just a little mouse that he’s trying to pet at with comfort.

“Deimos, it’s okay. You don’t need to apologize. If anything—“ He runs his hand through my hair, begging at me with such gentleness that I lift my face to him, tip my gaze up at him.

He takes advantage of the tilted angle, kisses me, soft and sweet about it, slow, pressing his lips to mine until I relent, become softness for him as well. He sits beside me on the crate and keeps an arm around me. “Deimos, I’m sorry for what I said last night. I was upset, but I shouldn’t have said – that. It was cruel of me, and I’m sorry.”

He cups my face, brushes aside my bangs, and kisses me again, soft and sweet. “I love you. I love being with you. I don’t want you to feel bad, like you have to be sorry, I just want you – Deimos, I know you’ve been trying. Everything with Sach—just, everything, it’s been hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s your fault. I know you try. I love you so much for how hard you try. I’m trying, too, okay?”

I nod, slowly, search over his face until it’s too much, until I can’t look at him anymore, I have to look at my knees.

“Last night, this morning…” He pauses, kneads his hand into my shoulder. “I just needed some time to think. And, yeah. I’ll believe Cain did it for my benefit. He’s such an asshole like that.”

Makes me try to laugh, a horrible breathless trembling, something ugly. I flinch from the noise, bury my face again, try to stop making such a terrible sound, try to hide how ugly it is. I’m supposed to be the one explaining things, I need to be the one filling the awkwardness between us with words, but he’s already done it, already explained everything for me.

“Hey,” he says. Quiet about it, scratching his fingers into my hair. “You know I love the way you sound, right? You have such a pretty voice, Deimos. Your laugh, too, it’s really pretty.”

I lift my head up, scowl at him. “Liar,” I rasp.

He looks so serious, smiling in a way that’s sad because he knows I can’t believe such a well-intended lie. He leans toward me, kisses the corner of my eye, curve of my jaw, starts to set his mouth against the side of my neck and then stops, abrupt about it, pulls away and looks contrite. He’s got his hand high on my shoulder, almost against the back of my neck, and he lowers that touch as well. Makes a fucking force-field of worry away from my throat

Scalding heat runs over my face, makes me tighten up into a furious glare. “It’s fine.” Pure mumble, my stupid little rasp slurring the words together. “Don’t have to – doesn’t bother me. It’s fine.”

“Deimos,” he says. Wounded, worried, being stupid about it because the mad dog had to go and prove a point. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.”

I huff about it, try not to be frustrated because we’re trying to be sweet, he’s trying to be nice, this is such a nice fucking moment that I’m going to make awkward if I snap at him. I lower my legs over his, unfold from my tense ball, practically crawl right up into his lap so he’ll stop looking so worried.

I take his hand, shift it right up against my neck, so he can feel me swallow. Mostly against my side, fingers curled toward the back, the round curve of his palm over my pulse. Leaves one side clear, leaves it so it isn’t what makes me nervous, because it’s a stupid fucking embarrassing thing that I’ve got to make him stop worrying about. Yeah, it makes me tense, but he’s just as tense, trying to keep still, not putting any pressure on me, one eye big and his brows wide to pull the scars beneath the patch.

“Fine,” I tell him. Maybe he can feel the little vibration of it, the hissing roughness, the ruin and ugliness. “Okay?”

I think he might not understand because of the haste with which he moves his hand away as soon as I let go. He bends his head toward me, so I lift up, eager to kiss him, but he keeps going, kisses my neck instead. “Okay,” he says. Whispering it right into my fucking pulse, lips hot, mouth eager, so it’s shivery nervousness in a good way.

I close my eyes, tilt my head back, arching my throat toward him. Imagine that he’s kissing away all the ruin even if he’s not, even if it’s still rasping and ugly when I say, “Love you.”

Makes him still for a moment, so I think maybe it came out wrong, maybe I said the wrong thing, maybe the beautiful little words were just too ugly in my voice because he’s a liar, we both know my voice isn’t pretty, both know there’s nothing pretty about a scrawny grey mouse.

At last he moves, pushes at me, hot and eager with the way he nips at me, nuzzles into the soft skin. His fingers dig into my back, bringing me toward him, puts his mouth over mine so it’s crushing and deep, brilliantly intense. He has to stop kissing me to talk, can’t quite manage it, so the words fall against my lips in pieces. “Heard you tell Cain, heard you say—“ 

I start to clutch back at him, push at his clothes the same way he’s pushing at mine, the two of getting hot and eager. I keep whispering at him. Now there are too many words, so that they hurt to keep inside. “It’s true,” I tell him. “I love you.”

Makes him laugh, shaky and breathless, hands trembling as he tries to work the clasp of my belt. “Stop,” he says. Playful about it, so I don’t take him seriously, know that he’s happy. “That’s too much. I won’t be able to, oh!”

Because my hands aren’t shaking, they’re down the front of his pants, making him hard and weeping with just a few little touches. “Thought you liked my voice,” I say. I sway forward, bite at his ear, get so he can really hear me, so I can drop my voice into airless hush, where it can almost sound pretty like how he thinks. “I love you. Just you. Only you.”

“Oh, fuck.” Eye wide, breathless because of me, hot and eager as he shoves at me. Gentle, always gentle, just insistent, getting me to the floor, so fast about it that I’m surprised, that I laugh and I’m too surprised to care how breathless and terrible it sounds. He’s all over me, hands and mouth, like he can’t even decide which parts of me to touch and kiss.

He figures out where he wants to be, slid low between my legs. He shucks my pants down around my knees at the same time, gets his hands under my hips and lifts me up, lifts my ass into his mouth. Slicks the entrance with his tongue, whirls the wet tip over the sensitive clench of muscle, pulls me close so I’m rested back into my shoulders, hoisted toward him and helplessly splayed for him.

His breath is hot against my skin. “Fuck, Deimos, I love you, too—“ Kisses the words into me, teasing about it at first and then hard, tongue plunging, so I gasp and squirm.

Forget I have a voice to give him, forget what I was saying earlier so I just feel it, feel warmth in my chest and heat in my dripping cock, loving him and all tangled up in desire. I want him, want more of him, but he’s giving me so much already because he’s strong enough to hold me there with one arm, resting my thighs into his shoulders so my legs are over his back, he’s got me almost all the way upside down so the angle’s deep, so he can stroke my cock at the same time, working his mouth on me.

I almost kick at him, he’s making me feel so wild and impatient. I try to find my voice again but it’s just small noises, little whimpers that make him tighten over me, almost growl into me, I can feel his teeth and, ah, I do actually kick at him a little then, squirming and gasping.

He lets me go, breathing hard and hot as he throws my weight around like it’s nothing. Gentle, maybe a little rough, so I kind of slide off him, get pushed off him, lose my pants entirely. I throw myself at him at the same time he grabs for me.

I’m trying to kiss him, hands burying into the silk-soft fall his hair. I pluck at the string of the eye patch with my fingers until it slides free, so it’s just him, nothing else between us. I bend his face to mine, and he’s trying to kiss me back, snipping with it because that’s just how it is, I’ve made him wild, waved a chair of words in his face to make the lion pounce and, oh, is it wonderful.

I’m in his lap, rolling my hips over him, he’s got his hands over the curve of my thigh, pushing me into him, so we’re just grinding together like we’ve forgotten there can be a better rhythm, a deeper connection. I shudder and writhe into him, fingers so tight through his hair I’m afraid it might be hurting him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He breaks from my lips, licks and nips beneath my jaw, teeth imprinting without sinking into the soft flesh of my neck, so I whimper and whine with a tumble of little noises.

“Oh, fuck—“ Breathes it at me, hands digging into my hips, jerking me forward to slide over his erection. We’re looking at each other, staring, chests heaving, he’s wide-eyed with lust, I’m going to fucking come all over his belly from just staring at him unless he—

I’m still wet from his mouth, tender and ready, it doesn’t take much for him to press me open with his fingers, one and then the second right away, so I’m still a little tight and hiss, arch my back and flex into his hand. I spread my knees, shift my thighs apart. I’m straddling him, braced against his shoulder. He’s sitting back, thighs spread under me, working me open fast, fumbling to get his cock lined up.

He thrusts up, I lower myself down, pressure and pushing in a way that makes my eyes roll back for a moment, makes it tight and wonderful. We’re breathing too fast and hard to kiss but sharing the same air all the same, faces close together, so I shudder around him, he shudders into me, it’s so intense.

“Aahn!” That’s me, my little cry, right over his low rumble. He stays there, sheathed into me fully, like he’s too stunned to start moving which is kind of how I feel about it.  “Mmn!” Scrunch my eyes shut and arch, shift, lifting up and then back down again, the motion shaky because it’s so intense.

“Yeah, uhn!” Like he’s forgotten how words work, too, like his voice is just something broken as well. I can feel the strength of him, the heat and flex of his muscles, the way he seems to come to life beneath me and begin to move, driving up into me with slow, easy thrusts.

Being in me seems to calm him, makes him less wild, makes it so he’s just prowling at me, fiendish and oh so fucking sexy with it. He kneads at my hip, controlling the motions between us, making me sway and rock against him. “Yeah, you like that?”

I nod, tip my head back, glad he’s strong because I can’t remember how to move, I’m just feeling him all the way in me, feeling everything he’s giving me. “Mmn!”

“God, yes, like it, too. Love you.” Kisses my shoulder, bites at me, sets his teeth into me without pressure, just tasting me, rolling his hips up into me. All this strength and he’s so gentle with me.

“Nnhn—ah!” The leverage changes, the penetration is just enough different that he brushes right across where it’s white heat and, nope, I’m gone, quaking, shooting off too soon like some silly virgin.

I hear him say, “Oh, fuck, yeah, that’s so pretty, you’re so beautiful.”

That’s too much, that’s almost entirely too much, I thrash harder and jerk against him but he’s got me held, got me tight, fucking me through the helpless ecstasy, unrelenting with the slow, deep roll of him, the powerful, controlled thrusts. I sag into him, whimpering, pulling his hair, clawing at him, shivering with aftershocks, dribbling the last of my orgasm on to his belly.

He puts a hand between my shoulders to hold me upright. It’s barely anything, slow and calm, restrained, up and down motions that I feel all over. He nudges at me, so I lift my face to him, let him kiss me. He’s just as slow and thorough with the kiss as with the pumping flex and rise of his hips.

“Love you,” he says. Softly, right up against my lips, moving into me like he wants to do this for hours, like there’s no rush in the world, so unhurried when before he was being wild. And this is somehow all the more maddening for me, all the more intense, I came just a few seconds ago but it feels like we just started.

“Mmhn.” Whine it at him, nod.

He smiles, bumps his forehead into mine and holds it there, breath shivering over me. He asks, “Wanna be on top, baby? I like getting to see you.”

I nod again, slide off him slow. He lays back, lazy like getting into the sun, head still lifted so he can watch me, so I have to lean over him and push him all the way down with a kiss. I work my hands into his shoulders, massaging and rubbing so he sighs. I press my knees against his side, play his erection through my hand, stroking at him gently while I get into position. He’s watching me, eager, cock weeping, slick from being in me already.

I press down into him slow, hands resting lightly on his stomach, upright so he can see all of me. He sets his hands loose over my knees, watching, letting me bend and arch against him, watching me ride him slow and steady. I bet he expects me to be quick, bet he doesn’t think I’ve learned how to be gentle, how to draw this out and tease him. I play my hands over him, wide, smooth gestures in tandem with my hips.

“Aahn. Mmnh.” Let him know this feels good, give him all my small noises because he likes them, because they make his breath quicken and pupil darken. He brings his hips up, matching my slowness, watching me sway and roll over him. “Pah! Mmn!” I put my head back, fingers curling and scratching at him lightly.

“Oh, God.” Whispering it, reverent, watching me. He runs a hand over my leg, brushes at my stomach where it’s wet, smeared with come.

I grab his wrist, lean forward slightly as I lift his hand. Watch right back at him, let him see me put my tongue out. I close my eyes at the last second, so it’s just the taste of me on his fingertips, the salt and sharp of it, the slight sourness but the way it’s sweet. I keep sucking even when it’s just the taste of him, moving his hand into my mouth and pulling it back down again.

“Fuck, baby, yeah, you’re so—“ Strangled about it, voice tight, jerking his hips, no longer slow even though I am, I’m the one who gets to be calm now, I’m the one controlled.

I flex against him, smooth up and down motions. I let go of his hand, give it one final lick so it’s wet when he places it on my thigh again.

“Nng.” He lifts up into me. “Deimos, touch yourself, yeah? Mmn, hey?”

I shake my head, shudder around him. He’s got me hard again, I got hard sucking his hand, but him talking like that makes it worse, makes it hard to stay slow. How the hell does he always manage to be so slow? I manage somehow, rub into him, getting my whole body into the sway of it.

“I want to see you come again. Please, baby, it’s so pretty when you do.” Panting the words at me, unflinching about his eagerness.

I shake my head again. Keep rocking into him even though my thighs are starting to burn, even though I’m hot and tight all over.

“I’ll do it for you,” he says. “That okay?”

I nod, quick, ready, eager.  I gasp when he touches me, strokes at me. Teasing at first, slow, so I lift and lower, ride him faster, and he responds, gets his big hand over me fully, pumps. Runs his thumb over the slit, slicking me, making me shudder and hitch little noises at him. I move up and down, press my hand into his arm for balance. Getting faster, I have no idea how he keeps so slow all the time, I’m aching deep inside and it’s building again, coiling heat, getting tight.

“Uhn, Deimos! Fuck, yeah, God, yes, baby, just like that you’re so—“ I can hear his jaw clench, the strain of it. I’m got him close and he’s trying to get me off first, doesn’t want to go until I do, so it sparks something in me, makes it a challenge.

I grind down on him, tip forward. Push and rock, forward at him. Want to smile and be playful, face flushed and heated all over, warm and wanting him to know why. “Luhh—“ Fuck, that’s not talking, that’s rattling, wheezing, my stupid ugly voice is too raspy, too wrecked. I lean back quickly, fake like maybe I wasn’t trying to say anything at all, heart thumping, rock into him faster so he won’t notice.

“Ah, baby, love you, too,” he says. So he heard me after all, found something pretty in it. He rolls his shoulders against the floor, flexes and shifts, shudders. The motion of his hand over my cock loses its rhythm as he gives it up first, I guess I sent him over anyway, so he’s filling me with heat all over, not just with the buck of his hips but also into the racing beat of my heart.

“Aahn! Saah!” Hissing, gasping, getting nothing out but trying anyway, “So! Ah!”

“Yeah, fuck, so good!” Groaned out from the shaking way he’s locked in climax. He pumps at me quick, remembering his hand, how hard I am, but it doesn’t matter now. I’m right behind him, spilling over his belly for a second time, tumbling forward over his chest at the same time, just a shaking little thing against him, unable to keep myself upright and wanting to feel him all over me.

He lets me huddle into him, puts arm around me to hold me there, both of us rolling through the last of the orgasm and breathing hard. I nuzzle into his shoulder, nudge him with my nose, hum a little from deep in my throat. He nods, pulls his trapped hand out from between us and wipes it on the edge of the blanket. I’m trembling a while afterward, even when his breathing slows, the thump of his heart beneath my ear is slow, when he runs his hand over my back slow and steady. He lets me press against him, he’s still inside me, so close together that he’s everything.

Eventually I push myself upright and he slips free of me with a little sigh, sounding content about it, satisfied and replete, lazy with the way he kisses my shoulder. He cups my face for a moment, brushes at my bangs. “Was that all okay?” he asks.

I stare at him until it makes him look almost embarrassed. He turns away to hunt for the pieces of our uniforms, to start sorting out mine from his. After a moment he talks again, without looking at me, trying to sound casual. “It’s just, I want to make sure – I mean, Deimos, I want you to enjoy yourself.”

I stare at him more, accept the pieces of my uniform and start putting them on slow.

When I don’t respond, it makes him ramble. “It’s only because you’re so good, you know? And I, it isn’t like I haven’t before, I have, it’s just, it’s different with you. I want you to like it. I want to do things you like.”

And I realize what he’s trying to say without saying it, calling me good when he means I’m a whore, when he means how I’ve been a slut on my knees enough times that he knows it, can tell I know my way around a dick, how I can swallow without flinching and let him go as fast or slow as he likes without getting hurt. Bright, hot, terrible heat, all over my face and ears, I’m burning with shame and have to stare at my socks like they’ve become foreign objects, like I don’t know how to put them on my feet but I sure as hell know how to bend over and take it up the ass.

“Deimos?” Noticing that I’ve gone quiet and still, sounding concerned about it. “Hey, what is it? Was it not okay? Did you not like that?”

I shake my head. Whisper, very small, not caring that it’s rasping. “Liked it fine.”

“What’s wrong? What did—? Baby, I’m sorry.” He gets up close to me, puts his big hand over my little one. “I wish you were my first, okay? I didn’t mean—“

Sudden, flinching silence, so he’s probably figured out that he sure as hell isn’t my first and we both know it. “Oh, Deimos, honey, no, you know I don’t care about that. Honest, it doesn’t matter to me. You make me feel good, okay? That’s all I meant by that. I just want to do the same back to you, make you feel good, too. I want to see you start smiling again, like you were before, oh, baby, you were so happy earlier, please.”

He rambles about it, pets at me, scoops me into his lap and holds me, kisses at me. I’m just some stupid slutty mouse in his arms, sulky and cold, unresisting but unyielding all the same. “Please don’t think that about yourself, okay? You’re good, baby, I mean that. You’re hot, yeah, the sex is great, but you’re also just a good person. You make me really happy, Deimos.”

I bring my eyes up, look at him. Search at him, pleading without words because I’m scared to see he’s lying, maybe scared more to see him think it’s the truth.

He’s so serious, expression soft and anxious, honest all the way through. “Hey,” he says gently. He puts his fingers through my bangs, pulling them aside. “It’s different, right? With me.”

My brow works into a frown. I don’t really understand, but I nod anyway.

“It’s because I love you. And you love me. So, that makes it different.” He gives me a soft smile, and it pulls my mouth into one as well. I duck my face, try to hide by turning my head to the side. He laughs slightly, cups my cheek and urges me back around to look at him. “I do love you, very much. I guess it’s a bit stupid to ask if it was okay when you came twice.”

It just bursts out of me, breathless and rasping, my stupid ugly laugh. I flinch back, try to get my hand over my mouth, try to stop myself, but he laughs as well. “Now you’ll be expecting three every time. You’ll wear me out.”

And I can’t stop laughing because he won’t stop, so I have to kiss him, throw my arms over his neck and squeeze tight until he’s quiet, until it’s silence. Kiss him until it’s all together different breathless little noises we’re making, until we either have to quit or start taking off our clothes again.

We finished getting dressed, pick up the area some because we like to pretend it’s ours just because no one else ever comes here. He kisses me again, just quick and sweet, saying goodbye even though we hold hands in the lift, even though I press up against him a bit too close while he keys open the dorm door.

There are two mattresses pushed together on the floor and a pale rolled up lump against the wall waiting for us, so we lay down and get comfortable, tangle together and fall asleep that way, wake up that way. Pressed together, he’s close and warm, I know he’s awake and he knows I’m awake but we pretend to be asleep just a little longer, wanting to stay together like this because that’s just the way it is. 

 

 

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Tomoscloud made a [music video ](http://tomoscloud.tumblr.com/post/50078629814/so-this-is-the-birthday-present-for-violet-its-a)for this fic!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [What He Said](https://archiveofourown.org/works/774087) by [violetnyte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetnyte/pseuds/violetnyte)




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